The History Boys (5 page)

Mrs Lintott
Lintott? No. A chartered accountant.

Legged it to Dumfries.

Hector
Dakin's a good-looking boy, though somehow sad.

Mrs Lintott
You always think they're sad, Hector, every, every time. Actually I wouldn't have said he was sad. I would have said he was cunt-struck.

Hector
Dorothy.

Mrs Lintott
I'd have thought you'd have liked that. It's a compound adjective. You like compound adjectives.

Hector
He's clever, though.

Mrs Lintott
They're all clever. I saw to that.

Hector
You give them an education. I give them the wherewithal to resist it. We are that entity beloved of our Headmaster, a ‘team'.

Mrs Lintott
You take a longer view than most. These days, teachers just remember the books they discovered and loved as students and shove them on the syllabus. Then they wonder why their pupils aren't as keen as they are. No discovery is why.
Catcher in the Rye
is a current example. Or have I got the whole thing wrong?

Hector
Maybe Auden has it right.

Mrs Lintott
That's a change.

Hector
Dorothy.

‘Let each child that's in your care …'

Mrs Lintott
I know, ‘… have as much neurosis as the child can bear.'

And how many children had Auden, pray?

Classroom
.

Irwin
So we arrive eventually at the less-than-startling discovery that so far as the poets are concerned, the First World War gets the thumbs-down.

We have the mountains of dead on both sides, right … ‘hecatombs', as you all seem to have read somewhere …

Anybody know what it means?

Posner
‘Great public sacrifice of many victims, originally of oxen.'

Dakin
Which, sir, since Wilfred Owen says men were dying like cattle, is the appropriate word.

Irwin
True, but no need to look so smug about it.

What else? Come on, tick them all off.

Crowther
Trench warfare.

Lockwood
Barrenness of the strategy.

Timms
On both sides.

Akthar
Stupidity of the generals.

Timms
Donkeys, sir.

Dakin
Haigh particularly.

Posner
Humiliation of Germany at Versailles. Redrawing of national borders.

Crowther
Ruhr and the Rhineland.

Akthar
Mass unemployment. Inflation.

Timms
Collapse of the Weimar Republic. Internal disorder. And … The Rise of Hitler!

Irwin
So. Our overall conclusion is that the origins of the Second War lie in the unsatisfactory outcome of the First.

Timms
(
doubtfully
) Yes. (
with more certainty
) Yes.

Others nod
.

Irwin
First class. Bristol welcomes you with open arms. Manchester longs to have you. You can walk into Leeds. But I am a fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, and I have just read seventy papers all saying the same thing and I am asleep …

Scripps
But it's all true.

Irwin
What has that got to do with it? What has that got to do with anything?

Let's go back to 1914 and I'll put you a different case.

Try this for size.

Germany does not want war and if there is an arms race it is Britain who is leading it. Though there's no reason why we should want war. Nothing in it for us. Better stand back and let Germany and Russia fight it out while we take the imperial pickings.

These are facts.

Why do we not care to acknowledge them? The cattle, the body count. We still don't like to admit the war was even partly our fault because so many of our people died. A photograph on every mantelpiece. And all this mourning has veiled the truth. It's not so much lest we forget, as lest we remember. Because you should realise that so far as the Cenotaph and the Last Post and all that stuff is concerned, there's no better way of forgetting something than by commemorating it.

And Dakin.

Dakin
Sir?

Irwin
You were the one who was morally superior about Haigh.

Dakin
Passchendaele. The Somme. He was a butcher, sir.

Irwin
Yes, but at least he delivered the goods. No, no, the real enemy to Haigh's subsequent reputation was the Unknown Soldier. If Haigh had had any sense he'd have had him disinterred and shot all over again for giving comfort to the enemy.

Lockwood
So what about the poets, then?

Irwin
What about them? If you read what they actually say as distinct from what they write, most of them seem to have enjoyed the war.

Siegfried Sassoon was a good officer. Saint Wilfred Owen couldn't wait to get back to his company. Both of them surprisingly bloodthirsty.

Poetry is good up to a point. Adds flavour.

Dakin
It's the foreskins again, isn't it? Bit of garnish.

Irwin
(
ignoring this
) But if you want to relate the politics to the war, forget Wilfred Owen and try Kipling:

Akthar
Thanks a lot.

Irwin

‘If any question why we died,

Tell them because our fathers lied.'

In other words …

Timms
Oh no, sir. With respect, can I stop you? No, with a poem or any work of art we can never say ‘in other words'. If it is a work of art there are no other words.

Lockwood
Yes, sir. That's why it is a work of art in the first place.

You can't look at a Rembrandt and say ‘in other words', can you, sir?

Irwin is puzzled where all this comes from but is
distracted by Rudge
.

Rudge
So what's the verdict then, sir? What do I write down?

Irwin
You can write down, Rudge, that ‘I must not write down every word that teacher says.'

You can also wArite down that the First World War was0a mistake. It was not a tragedy.

And as for the truth, Scripps, which you were worrying about: truth is no more at issue in an examination than thirst at a wine-tasting or fashion at a striptease.

Dakin
Do you really believe that, sir, or are you just trying to make us think?

Scripps
You can't explain away the poetry, sir.

Lockwood
No, sir. Art wins in the end.

The bell goes
.

Scripps
What about this, sir?

‘Those long uneven lines

Standing as patiently

As if they were stretched outside

The Oval or Villa Park,

The crowns of hats, the sun

On moustached archaic faces

Grinning as if it were all

An August Bank Holiday lark …'

The others take up the lines of Larkin's poem, maybe
saying a couple of lines each through to the end, as
they go – but matter of factly
.

Lockwood

‘Never such innocence,

Never before or since,

As changed itself to past

Without a word –

Akthar

‘– the men

Leaving the gardens tidy,

Posner

‘The thousands of marriages

Lasting a little while longer:

Timms

‘Never such innocence again.'

Irwin
How come you know all this by heart? (
Baffled,
shouts
.) Not that it answers the question. (
He goes
.)

Scripps
So much for our glorious dead.

Dakin
I know. Still, apropos Passchendaele, can I bring you up to speed on Fiona?

Scripps
No.

Dakin
She's my Western Front. Last night, for instance, meeting only token resistance, I reconnoitred the ground … Are you interested in this?

Scripps
No. Go on.

Dakin
As far as … the actual place.

Scripps
Shit.

Dakin
I mean, not onto it and certainly not into it. But up to it. At which point the Hun, if I may so characterise the fair Fiona, suddenly dug in, no further deployments were sanctioned, and around 23.00 hours our forces withdrew.

Like whereas I'd begun the evening thinking this might be the big push.

Scripps
You do have a nice time.

Dakin
And the beauty of it is, the metaphor really fits.

I mean, just as moving up to the front-line troops presumably had to pass the sites of previous battles where every inch of territory has been hotly contested, so it is with me … like particularly her tits, which only fell after a prolonged campaign some three weeks ago and to which I now have immediate access and which were indeed the start line for last night's abortive thrust southwards.

Scripps
I can't take any more. Enough.

Dakin
Still, at least I'm doing better than Felix.

Posner
Felix?

Scripps
Why? He doesn't …

Dakin
Tries to. Chases her round the desk hoping to cop a feel.

Scripps
I don't want to think about it.

Dakin
He's only human.

Posner
Actually, when you think about it the metaphor isn't exact. Because what Fiona is presumably carrying out is a planned withdrawal. You're not forcing her. She's not being overwhelmed by superior forces.

Does she like you?

Dakin
Course she likes me.

Posner
Then you're not disputing the territory. You're just negotiating over the pace of the occupation.

Scripps
Just let us know when you get to Berlin.

Dakin
I'm beginning to like him more.

Posner
Who? Me?

Dakin
Irwin. Though he hates me. (
Goes
.)

Posner
Oh Scrippsy. I can't bear to listen, but I want to hear every word. What does that mean?

Posner sings a verse or two of ‘Bewitched' as Scripps
plays and the class filters back
.

Hector
Well done, Posner. Now poetry of a more traditional sort.

Timms groans
.

Timms groans? What is this?

Timms
Sir. I don't always understand poetry.

Hector
You don't always understand it? Timms, I never understand it. But learn it now, know it now and you'll understand it whenever.

Timms
I don't see how we can understand it. Most of the stuff poetry's about hasn't happened to us yet.

Hector
But it will, Timms. It will. And then you will have the antidote ready! Grief. Happiness. Even when you're dying.

We're making your deathbeds here, boys.

Lockwood
Fucking Ada.

Hector
Poetry is the trailer! Forthcoming attractions!

There is a knock on the door. Hector motions them to
silence
.

‘O villainy! Let the door be locked! Treachery! Seek it out.'

The door is tried
.

Hector
(
whispers, or does he even bother to whisper
?)

Knocks at the door?

In literature.

The Trial
, for instance, begins with a knock. Anybody?

Akthar
The person from Porlock.

Hector
Yes.

Posner
Don
Giovanni
: the Commendatore.

Hector
Excellent.

Scripps
Behold I stand at the door and knock.

Revelation.

Timms looks
.

Timms
Gone, sir.

Hector
Good.

Timms
(
to the others
) Irwin.

Hector
Very often the knock is elided – the knock, as it were, taken as knocked.

Did the knights knock at the door of Canterbury before they murdered Beckett?

And maybe the person from Porlock never actually knocked but just put his or her head in at the window?

Death knocks, I suppose.

Love.

And of course, opportunity.

(
looking at his watch
) Now. Some silly time.

Where's the kitty?

Posner gets a tin and gives it to Hector
.

Timms/Lockwood
Oh, sir, sir.

We've got one, sir.

Hector
Fifty p each.

Timms
It's a good one, sir.

Lockwood
You won't get this one, sir.

Hector
That remains to be seen.

Timms
We have to smoke, sir.

Hector
Very well.

Scripps accompanies this scene on the piano
.

Timms
Gerry, please help me.

Lockwood
Shall we just have a cigarette on it?

Timms
Yes.

Lockwood lights the cigarettes and gives one to Timms
.

Lockwood
May I sometimes come here?

Timms
Whenever you like. It's your home, too.

There are people here who love you.

Lockwood
And will you be happy, Charlotte?

Timms
Oh Gerry. Don't let's ask for the moon.

We have the stars.

Hector pretends puzzlement, looks in the tin to count
the kitty
.

Hector
Could it be Paul Henreid and Bette Davis in
Now
Voyager
?

Timms
Aw, sir.

Hector
It's famous, you ignorant little tarts.

Lockwood
We'd never heard of it, sir.

Hector
Walt Whitman.
Leaves of Grass
.

‘The untold want by life and land ne'er granted
Now Voyager, sail thou forth to seek and find.'

Fifty p. Pay up.

Lockwood
Shit.

Hector
When you say shit, Lockwood, I take it you're referring to the well-established association between money and excrement?