Jumpers (5 page)

GEORGE:
I don't believe you know anything about it. You are the wife of an academic: that means you are twice removed from the centre of events.

DOTTY:
Archie says that the academics can look forward to rather more radicalism than liberalism.
(
She takes the goldfish bowl into the Bathroom
.)

GEORGE
(
carefully reassuring himself
): Radicalism has a fine and honourable tradition in this country. It will always involve a healthy scepticism about inherited means and ends, that is all.
(
DOTTY
re-enters with the goldfish bowl, emptied and upside down, over her head. She walks with the leaden-footed gait of a moon-walker
,
GEORGE
ignores her
.)
I mean, it would be presumptuous to condemn radical ideas simply because they appear to me to be self-evidently stupid and criminal if they do happen to be at the same time radical, (
DOTTY
,
moonwalking, affects to find and stoop for a small coin, which she holds up for
GEORGE
,
who does not pause
.) ‘The Moon and Sixpence'.
It is, after all, a radical idea to ensure freedom of the
individual by denying it to groups.
(
DOTTY
takes off the fish bowl and replaces it on its table, somewhat pointlessly now
.)
Indeed, any party which calls itself radical might be said to have forfeited this claim if it
neglected
to take over the broadcasting services and send the Church Commissioners to prison——

DOTTY:
It wasn't the Church Commissioners, it was property companies and Masters of Foxhounds.

GEORGE:
I thought the Church Commissioners
were
a property company.

DOTTY:
They were dispossessed, retroactively, as a humane gesture.
(
She tosses him a ‘Times' newspaper from the table beside the bed
.)

GEORGE:
Well, what about the Church Commissioners who were also Masters of Foxhounds?

DOTTY
:
I
don't know—Darling, I'm starving—

GEORGE
(
turns a page. Morosely
): There's a photograph here of the Association of National Newspaper Proprietors sitting in the back of a police car with a raincoat over their heads.

DOTTY:
At least it's a government which keeps its promises.

GEORGE
(
flinging down the paper
): This isn't political theory! To think that these simplistic score-settlers should have appropriated the battle-scarred colours of those true radicals who fought for universal suffrage and the repeal of the Corn Laws——! (
Raving
.) And how is the Church to pay its clergy? Are they going to pull down the churches?

DOTTY:
Yes. (
He gapes
.) The Church is going to be rationalized.

GEORGE
:
Rationalized
? (
Furiously
.) You can't rationalize the Thirty-Nine Articles!

DOTTY
: No, no… not the faith, the fabric. You remember how they rationalized the railways?—well, now they're going to rationalize the Church. (
Pause
.) There was an announcement on television.

GEORGE
: Who by?

DOTTY:
The Archbishop of Canterbury. Clegthorpe.

GEORGE
:
Clegthorpe? Sam Clegthorpe?

DOTTY
: It's been made a political appointment, like judges.

GEORGE:
Are you telling me that the Radical Liberal spokesman for Agriculture has been made Archbishop of Canterbury?!!

DOTTY:
Don't shout at
me
… I suppose if you think of him as a sort of… shepherd, ministering to his flock…

GEORGE:
But he's an
agnostic
.

DOTTY
(
capitulating
): I absolutely agree with you—
nobody
is going to have any confidence in him. It's like the Chairman of the Coal Board believing in oil.

GEORGE
(
shouts
): No, it is not! (
An exhausted pause
.) You're making it up. You just like to get me going.

DOTTY
: Do you find it incredible that a man with a scientific background should be Archbishop of Canterbury?

GEORGE:
How the hell do
I
know what I find incredible?
Credibility is an expanding field…. Sheer disbelief hardly registers on the face before the head is nodding with all the wisdom of instant hindsight. ‘Archbishop Clegthorpe? Of course! The inevitable capstone to a career in veterinary medicine!' What happened to the old Archbishop?

DOTTY
: He abdicated… or resigned or uncoped himself—

GEORGE
(
thoughtfully
): Dis-mantled himself, perhaps.
(
DOTTY
turns on the TV: the Moon
.)
Good God! (
At window
.) I can actually
see
Clegthorpe!—marching along, attended by two chaplains in belted raincoats.

DOTTY
: Is he wearing a mitre?

GEORGE
: Yes. He's blessing people to right and left. He must be drunk.
(
He stares out of the window
,
DOTTY
stares at the TV
.)

DOTTY:
Poor moon man, falling home like Lucifer. (
She turns off the TV: Screen goes white
.)… Of course, to somebody
on
it, the moon is always full, so the local idea of a sane action may well differ from ours. (
Pause; stonily
.) When they first landed, it was as though I'd seen a unicorn on the television news…. It was very interesting, of course. But it certainly spoiled unicorns. (
Pause
.) I tried to explain it to the analyst when everybody in sight was asking me what was the matter ‘What's the matter, darling?'… ‘What
happened
, baby?' What could I say? I came over funny at work so I went home early. It must happen often enough to a working girl. And why must the damned show go on anyway? So it stopped right then and there, and in a way my retirement was the greatest triumph of my career. Because nobody left.

GEORGE
(
to himself
): Sam Clegthorpe!

DOTTY:
For nearly an hour they all sat out front, staring at that stupid spangled moon, and they weren't waiting for their money's worth, they were waiting for
news. Is she all right?
… Oh yes, not bad for a bored housewife, eh?—not at all bad for a one-time student amateur bored with keeping house for her professor. And they're still waiting!—my retirement is now almost as long as my career, but they're waiting for me to come back out, and finish my song. And writing me love letters in the mean time. That's right,
not
so bloody bad for a second-class honours with a half-good voice and a certain variety of shakes. It's no good, though. They thought it was overwork or alcohol, but it was just those little grey men in goldfish bowls, clumping about in their lead boots on the television news; it was very interesting, but it certainly spoiled that Juney old moon; and much else besides…. The analyst went barking up the wrong tree, of course; I should never have mentioned unicorns to a Freudian.
(
GEORGE
turns back from the view
.)

GEORGE
(
serenely
): Archbishop Clegthorpe! That must be the high point of scientism; from here on the Darwinian revolution declines to its own origins. Man has gone ape and God is in the ascendant, and it will end as it began, with him gazing speculatively down on the unpeopled earth as the moon rises over the smoking landscape of vulcanite cliffs and lakes of clinker—not another Herculaneum, but the ash itself.

DOTTY
: Do you think it is…
significant
that it's impossible to imagine anyone building a church on the moon?

GEORGE:
If God exists, he certainly existed before religion. He is a philosopher's God, logically inferred from self-evident
premises. That he should have been taken up by a glorified supporters' club is only a matter of psychological interest.

DOTTY
: Archie says the Church is a monument to irrationality.

GEORGE
: If Archie ever chose to relinquish his position as an eminent Vice-Chancellor he would make an excellent buffoon; but since he manages to combine both roles without strain, I don't suppose he ever will.
(He turns and shouts at her with surprising anger
.)
The National Gallery is a monument to irrationality! Every concert hall is a monument to irrationality!—and so is a nicely kept garden, or a lover's favour, or a home for stray dogs! You stupid woman, if rationality were the criterion for things being allowed to exist, the world would be one gigantic field of soya beans!
(He picks up his tortoise and balances it lovingly on the palm of his hand, at the level of his mouth.) (Apologetically
.) Wouldn't it, Pat?
The irrational, the emotional, the whimsical… these are the stamp of humanity which makes reason a civilizing force. In a wholy rational society the moralist will be a variety of crank, haranguing the bus queue with the demented certitude of one blessed with privileged information—‘Good and evil are metaphysical absolutes!' What did I come in for?
(Looking round
.)

DOTTY
: All this talk about beans reminds me… I left something for Mrs. Doings to put in the oven—Could you——?

GEORGE
: No, I couldn't. You know where the kitchen is——

DOTTY
: Where?

GEORGE
: —and your aristocratic pretence that you know nothing of such things is all very amusing when I'm less busy, but—where's Mrs Thingummy?

DOTTY
: It's a national holiday. I expect she's down there somewhere, waving a little yellow flag.

GEORGE
: Oh yes—
she
would be in on it. In fact I can't think of anyone more susceptible to the Rad-Lib philosophy: ‘No problem is insoluble given a big enough plastic bag.'
(He's leaving
.)

DOTTY
: You don't happen to
have
a large plastic bag, do you?

GEORGE
: Can you remember what I came in for?

DOTTY
:
Please don't leave me!
I don't want to be left, to cope…

GEORGE
: Dotty, I'm sorry, I must…. I'm sorry if it's one of your bad days, but things will get better.

DOTTY
: There's no question of things getting better.
Things are one way or they are another way; ‘better' is how we see them, Archie says, and I don't personally, very much; though sometimes he makes them seem not so bad after all—no, that's wrong, too: he knows not ‘seems'. Things do not
seem
, on the one hand, they
are;
and on the other hand, bad is not what they can
be
. They can be green, or square, or Japanese, loud, fatal, waterproof or vanilla-flavoured; and the same for actions, which can be
disapproved of
, or comical, unexpected, saddening or good television, variously, depending on who frowns, laughs, jumps, weeps or wouldn't have missed it for the world. Things and actions, you understand, can have any number of real and verifiable properties. But good and bad, better and worse, these are not real properties of things, they are just expressions of our feelings about them.

GEORGE
: Archie says.

DOTTY
(
pause
): Unfortunately, I don't feel so good today. If you like, I won't see him. It'll be just you and me under that old-fashioned, silvery harvest moon, occasionally blue, jumped over by cows and coupleted by Junes, invariably shining on the one I love; well-known in Carolina, much loved in Allegheny, familiar in Vermont;
(the screw turning in her) Keats's
bloody moon!—for what has made the sage or poet write but the fair paradise of nature's light—And
Milton's
bloody moon! rising in clouded majesty, at length apparent queen, unveiled her peerless light and o'er the dark her silver mantle threw—And Shelley's sodding maiden, with white fire laden, whom mortals call the——
(weeping) Oh yes, things were in place then!
(She weeps on
GEORGE
'
s uncomprehending heart. He strokes her hair. She speaks into his chest
.)
Oh, Georgie….
(He strokes her hair. He doesn't really know what to do. So he plays with her hair for what seems a long time, lifting up her hair, running it through his fingers, looking at it, separating strands of hair. His mind grapples with hair, and then drifts, and stops
.)

GEORGE
: Have you seen Thumper?
(He is immediately ashamed of himself. But he has killed it. They separate
,
DOTTY
straightens up
.
GEORGE
walks to the door, taking his tortoise
.)
Did Bertrand Russell ever… mention me, after that?

DOTTY
(
pause):
Yes, he did, as a matter of fact. He asked whether you hunted.
(There is nothing to do but go, so he goes. Into the Study. He has closed the
BEDROOM
door. The
JUMPER
hangs on the door
.
DOTTY
regards the corpse without expression.
During the next scene in the Study, the light remains in the Bedroom
,
DOTTY
,
during the scene, lifts the corpse off its hook
and sits it in an upstage chair
.
GEORGE
enters the Study. His face is still foamed. The
SECRETARY
has been typing out his dictation.
She hands him the sheets.
The merest trace of interest in the fact that he has shaving foam on his face
.