Complete Works, Volume IV (7 page)

He walks slowly to the armchair.

He sits, slumped.

Silence

Lights up full sharply. Very bright.

Deeley in armchair.

Anna lying on divan.

Kate sitting on divan.

No Man's Land

 

No Man's Land
was first presented by the National Theatre at the Old Vic, London, on 23 April 1975, with the following cast:

Directed by
Peter Hall

Designed by
John Bury

This production transferred to Wyndham's theatre, London, on 15 July 1975.

The play was revived at the Almeida theatre, London, on 2 November 1992, with the following cast:

Directed by
David Leveaux

Designed by
Bob Crowley

This production transferred to the Comedy Theatre, London, in February 1993.

The play was revived on the Lyttelton stage of the National Theatre, London, on 6 December 2001, with the following cast:

Directed by
Harold Pinter

Designed by
Eileen Diss

 

CHARACTERS

HIRST,
a man in his sixties

SPOONER
,
a man in his sixties

FOSTER,
a man in his thirties

BRIGGS,
a man in his forties

P
LACE

A large room in a house in North West London. Well but sparely furnished. A strong and comfortable straight-backed chair, in which Hirst sits. A wall of bookshelves, with various items of pottery acting as bookstands, including two large mugs.

Heavy curtains across the window.

The central feature of the room is an antique cabinet, with marble top, brass gallery and open shelves, on which stands a great variety of bottles: spirits, aperitifs, beers, etc.

 

ACT ONE

Summer.

Night.

SPOONER
stands in the centre of the room. He is dressed in a very old and shabby suit, dark faded shirt, creased spotted tie.

HIRST
is pouring whisky at the cabinet. He is precisely dressed. Sports jacket. Well cut trousers.

HIRST
As it is?

SPOONER
As it is, yes please, absolutely as it is.

Hirst brings him the glass.

SPOONER
Thank you. How very kind of you. How very kind.

Hirst pours himself a vodka.

HIRST
Cheers.

SPOONER
Your health.

They drink. Spooner sips, Hirst drinks the vodka in one gulp. He refills his glass, moves to his chair and sits. Spooner empties his glass.

HIRST
Please help yourself.

SPOONER
Terribly kind of you.

Spooner goes to cabinet, pours. He turns.

SPOONER
Your good health.

He drinks.

SPOONER
What was it I was saying, as we arrived at your door?

HIRST
Ah . . . let me see.

SPOONER
Yes! I was talking about strength. Do you recall?

HIRST
Strength. Yes.

SPOONER
Yes. I was about to say, you see, that there are some people who appear to be strong, whose idea of what strength consists of is persuasive, but who inhabit the idea and not the fact. What they possess is not strength but expertise. They have nurtured and maintain what is in fact a calculated posture. Half the time it works. It takes a man of intelligence and perception to stick a needle through that posture and discern the essential flabbiness of the stance. I am such a man.

HIRST
You mean one of the latter?

SPOONER
One of the latter, yes, a man of intelligence and perception. Not one of the former, oh no, not at all. By no means.

Pause.

May I say how very kind it was of you to ask me in? In fact, you are kindness itself, probably always are kindness itself, now and in England and in Hampstead and for all eternity.

He looks about the room.

What a remarkably pleasant room. I feel at peace here. Safe from all danger. But please don't be alarmed. I shan't stay long. I never stay long, with others. They do not wish it. And that, for me, is a happy state of affairs. My only security, you see, my true comfort and solace, rests in the confirmation that I elicit from people of all kinds a common and constant level of indifference. It assures me that I am as I think myself to be, that I am fixed, concrete. To show interest in me or, good gracious, anything tending towards a positive liking of me, would cause in me a condition of the acutest alarm. Fortunately, the danger is remote.

Pause.

I speak to you with this startling candour because you are clearly a reticent man, which appeals, and because you are a stranger to me, and because you are clearly kindness itself.

Pause.

Do you often hang about Hampstead Heath?

HIRST
No.

SPOONER
But on your excursions . . . however rare . . . on your rare excursions . . . you hardly expect to run into the likes of me? I take it?

HIRST
Hardly.

SPOONER
I often hang about Hampstead Heath myself, expecting nothing. I'm too old for any kind of expectation. Don't you agree?

HIRST
Yes.

SPOONER
A pitfall and snare, if ever there was one. But of course I observe a good deal, on my peeps through twigs. A wit once entitled me a betwixt-twig peeper. A most clumsy construction, I thought.

HIRST
Infelicitous.

SPOONER
My Christ you're right.

Pause.

HIRST
What a wit.

SPOONER
You're most acutely right. All we have left is the English language. Can it be salvaged? That is my question.

HIRST
You mean in what rests its salvation?

SPOONER
More or less.

HIRST
Its salvation must rest in you.

SPOONER
It's uncommonly kind of you to say so. In you too, perhaps, although I haven't sufficient evidence to go on, as yet.

Pause.

HIRST
You mean because I've said little?

SPOONER
You're a quiet one. It's a great relief. Can you imagine two of us gabbling away like me? It would be intolerable.

Pause.

By the way, with reference to peeping, I do feel it incumbent upon me to make one thing clear. I don't peep on sex. That's gone forever. You follow me? When my twigs happen to shall I say rest their peep on sexual conjugations, however periphrastic, I see only whites of eyes, so close, they glut me, no distance possible, and when you can't keep the proper distance between yourself and others, when you can no longer maintain an objective relation to matter, the game's not worth the candle, so forget it and remember that what is obligatory to keep in your vision is space, space in moonlight particularly, and lots of it.

HIRST
You speak with the weight of experience behind you.

SPOONER
And beneath me. Experience is a paltry thing. Everyone has it and will tell his tale of it. I leave experience to psychological interpreters, the wetdream world. I myself can do any graph of experience you wish, to suit your taste or mine. Child's play. The present will not be distorted. I am a poet. I am interested in where I am eternally present and active.

Hirst stands, goes to cabinet, pours vodka.

I have gone too far, you think?

HIRST
I'm expecting you to go very much further.

SPOONER
Really? That doesn't mean I interest you, I hope?

HIRST
Not in the least.

SPOONER
Thank goodness for that. For a moment my heart sank.

Hirst draws the curtains aside, looks out briefly, lets curtain fall, remains standing.

But nevertheless you're right. Your instinct is sound. I could go further, in more ways than one. I could advance, reserve my defences, throw on a substitute, call up the cavalry, or throw everything forward out of the knowledge that when joy overfloweth there can be no holding of joy. The point I'm trying to make, in case you've missed it, is that I am a free man.

Hirst pours himself another vodka and drinks it. He puts the glass down, moves carefully to his chair, sits.

HIRST
It's a long time since we had a free man in this house.

SPOONER
We?

HIRST
I.

SPOONER
Is there another?

HIRST
Another what?

SPOONER
People. Person.

HIRST
What other?

SPOONER
There are two mugs on that shelf.

HIRST
The second is for you.

SPOONER
And the first?

HIRST
Would you like to use it? Would you like some hot refreshment?

SPOONER
That would be dangerous. I'll stick to your scotch, if I may.

HIRST
Help yourself.

SPOONER
Thank you.

He goes to cabinet.

HIRST
I'll take a whisky with you, if you would be so kind.

SPOONER
With pleasure. Weren't you drinking vodka?

HIRST
I'll be happy to join you in a whisky.

Spooner pours.

SPOONER
You'll take it as it is, as it comes?

HIRST
Oh, absolutely as it comes.

Spooner brings Hirst his glass.

SPOONER
Your very good health.

HIRST
Yours.

They drink.

Tell me . . . do you often hang about Jack Straw's Castle?

SPOONER
I knew it as a boy.

HIRST
Do you find it as beguiling a public house now as it was in the days of the highwaymen, when it was frequented by highwaymen? Notably Jack Straw. The great Jack Straw. Do you find it much changed?

SPOONER
It changed my life.

HIRST
Good Lord. Did it really?

SPOONER
I refer to a midsummer night, when I shared a drink with a Hungarian émigré, lately retired from Paris.

HIRST
The same drink?

SPOONER
By no means. You've guessed, I would imagine, that he was an erstwhile member of the Hungarian aristocracy?

HIRST
I did guess, yes.

SPOONER
On that summer evening, led by him, I first appreciated how quiet life can be, in the midst of yahoos and hullabaloos. He exerted on me a quite uniquely . . . calming influence, without exertion, without any . . . desire to influence. He was so much older than me. My expectations in those days, and I confess I had expectations in those days, did not include him in their frame of reference. I'd meandered over to Hampstead Heath, a captive to memories of a more than usually pronounced grisliness, and found myself, not much to my surprise, ordering a pint at the bar of Jack Straw's Castle. This achieved, and having negotiated a path through a particularly repellent lick-spittling herd of literati, I stumbled, unseeing, with my pint, to his bald, tanned, unmoving table. How bald he was.

Pause.

I think, after quite half my pint had descended, never to be savoured again, that I spoke, suddenly, suddenly spoke, and received . . . a response, no other word will do, a response, the like of which—

HIRST
What was he drinking?

SPOONER
What?

HIRST
What was he drinking?

SPOONER
Pernod.

Pause.

I was impressed, more or less at that point, by an intuition that he possessed a measure of serenity the like of which I had never encountered.

HIRST
What did he say?

Spooner stares at him.