The History Boys (6 page)

Lockwood
Too right, sir.

Hector
Good. Well, I will now tell you how much shit there is in the pot, namely sixteen pounds.

They go, leaving Rudge working
.

Mrs Lintott
Ah, Rudge,

Rudge
Miss.

Mrs Lintott
How are you all getting on with Mr Irwin?

Rudge
It's … interesting, miss, if you know what I mean. It makes me grateful for your lessons.

Mrs Lintott
Really? That's nice to hear.

Rudge
Firm foundations type thing. Point A. Point B. Point C. Mr Irwin is more … free-range?

Mrs Lintott
I hadn't thought of you as a battery chicken, Rudge.

Rudge
It's only a metaphor, miss.

Mrs Lintott
I'm relieved to hear it.

Rudge
You've force-fed us the facts; now we're in the process of running around acquiring flavour.

Mrs Lintott
Is that what Mr Irwin says?

Rudge
Oh no, miss. The metaphor's mine.

Mrs Lintott
Well, you hang on to it.

Rudge
Like I'm just going home now to watch some videos of the
Carry On
films. I don't understand why there are none in the school library.

Mrs Lintott
Why should there be?

Rudge
Mr Irwin said the
Carry Ons
would be good films to talk about.

Mrs Lintott
Really? How peculiar. Does he like them, do you think?

Rudge
Probably not, miss. You never know with him.

Mrs Lintott
I'm now wondering if there's something there that I've missed.

Rudge
Mr Irwin says that, ‘While they have no intrinsic artistic merit – (
He is reading from his notes
.) – they achieve some of the permanence of art simply by persisting and acquire an incremental significance if only as social history.'

Mrs Lintott
Jolly good.

Rudge
‘If George Orwell had lived, nothing is more certain than that he would have written an essay on the
Carry On
films.'

Mrs Lintott
I thought it was Mr Hector who was the Orwell fan.

Rudge
He is. Mr Irwin says that if Orwell were alive today he'd be in the National Front.

Mrs Lintott
Dear me. What fun you must all have.

Rudge
It's cutting-edge, miss. It really is.

Timms
Where do you live, sir?

Irwin
Somewhere on the outskirts, why?

Timms
‘Somewhere on the outskirts,' ooh. It's not a loft, is it, sir?

Akthar
Do you exist on an unhealthy diet of takeaway food, sir, or do you whisk up gourmet meals for one?

Timms
Or is it a lonely pizza, sir?

Irwin
I manage.

No questions from you, Dakin?

Dakin
What they want to know, sir, is, ‘Do you have a life?'

Or are we it?

Are we your life?

Irwin
Pretty dismal if you are. Because (
giving out
books
) these are as dreary as ever.

If you want to learn about Stalin, study Henry VIII.

If you want to learn about Mrs Thatcher, study Henry VIII.

If you want to know about Hollywood, study Henry VIII.

The wrong end of the stick is the right one. A question has a front door and a back door. Go in the back, or better still, the side.

Flee the crowd. Follow Orwell. Be perverse.

And since I mention Orwell, take Stalin. Generally agreed to be a monster, and rightly. So dissent. Find something, anything, to say in his defence.

History nowadays is not a matter of conviction.

It's a performance. It's entertainment. And if it isn't, make it so.

Rudge
I get it. It's an angle. You want us to find an angle.

Scripps
When Irwin became well known as an historian it was for finding his way to the wrong end of seesaws, settling on some hitherto unquestioned historical assumption then proving the opposite. Notoriously he would one day demonstrate on television that those who had been genuinely caught napping by the attack on Pearl Harbour were the Japanese and that the real culprit was President Roosevelt.

Find a proposition, invert it, then look around for proofs. That was the technique and it was as formal in its way as the disciplines of the medieval schoolmen.

Irwin
A question is about what you know, not about what you don't know. A question about Rembrandt, for instance, might prompt an answer about Francis Bacon.

Rudge
What if you don't know about him either?

Irwin
Turner then, or Ingres.

Rudge
Is he an old master, sir?

Timms
‘About suffering, they were never wrong,' sir,

‘The Old Masters … how it takes place

While someone else is eating or opening a window …'

Irwin
Have you done that with Mr Hector?

Timms
Done what, sir?

Irwin
The poem. You were quoting somebody. Auden.

Timms
Was I, sir? Sometimes it just flows out. Brims over.

Irwin
Why does he lock the door?

They turn to each other in mock surprise
.

Akthar
Lock the door? Does he lock the door?

Lockwood
It's locked against the Forces of Progress, sir.

Crowther
The spectre of Modernity.

Akthar
It's locked against the future, sir.

Posner
It's just that he doesn't like to be interrupted, sir.

Crowther
Creep.

Akthar
You have to lock the doors, sir. We are a nation of shoplifters, sir.

Lockwood
It's excrement, sir. The tide of.

Timms
And there's sexual intercourse, too, sir. They do it at bus stops, everyone young going down the long slide to happiness endlessly, sir.

Akthar
Free as bloody birds, sir.

Crowther
Disgusting.

Irwin
Does he have a programme? Or is it just at random?

Boys
Ask him, sir. We don't know, sir.

Akthar
It's just the knowledge, sir.

Timms
The pursuit of it for its own sake, sir.

Posner
Not useful, sir. Not like your lessons.

Akthar
Breaking bread with the dead, sir. That's what we do.

Irwin
What it used to be called is ‘wider reading'.

Lockwood
Oh no, sir. It can be narrower reading. Mr Hector says if we know one book off by heart, it doesn't matter if it's really crap. The Prayer Book, sir.
The
Mikado, the Pigeon
Fancier's
Gazette
… so long as it's words, sir. Words and worlds.

Crowther
And the heart.

Lockwood
Oh yes, sir. The heart.

‘The heart has its reasons that reason knoweth not,' sir.

Crowther
Pascal, sir.

Lockwood
It's higher than your stuff, sir. Nobler.

Posner
Only not useful, sir. Mr Hector's not as focused.

Timms
No, not focused at all, sir. Blurred, sir, more.

Akthar
You're much more focused, sir.

Crowther
And we know what we're doing with you, sir. Half the time with him we don't know what we're doing at all. (
Mimes being mystified
.)

Timms
We're poor little sheep that have lost our way, sir. Where are we?

Akthar
You're very young, sir. This isn't your gap year, is it, sir?

Irwin
I wish it was.

Lockwood
Why, sir? Do you not like teaching us, sir?

We're not just a hiccup between the end of university and the beginning of life, like Auden, are we, sir?

Dakin
Do you like Auden, sir?

Irwin
Some.

Dakin
Mr Hector does, sir. We know about Auden.

He was a schoolmaster for a bit, sir.

Irwin
I believe he was, yes.

Dakin
He was, sir. Do you think he was more like you or more like Mr Hector?

Irwin
I've no idea. Why should he be like either of us?

Dakin
I think he was more like Mr Hector, sir.

A bit of a shambles.

He snogged his pupils. Auden, sir. Not Mr Hector.

Irwin
You know more about him than I do.

Dakin

‘Lay your sleeping head, my love,

Human on my faithless arm.'

That was a pupil, sir. Shocking, isn't it?

Irwin
So you could answer a question on Auden, then?

Boys
How, sir?

No, sir.

That's in the exam, sir.

Timms
Mr Hector's stuff's not meant for the exam, sir. It's to make us more rounded human beings.

Irwin
This examination will be about everything and anything you know and are.

If there's a question about Auden or whoever and you
know about it, you must answer it.

Akthar
We couldn't do that, sir.

That would be a betrayal of trust.

Laying bare our souls, sir.

Lockwood
Is nothing sacred, sir?

We're shocked.

Posner
I would, sir.

And they would. They're taking the piss.

Lockwood

‘England, you have been here too long

And the songs you sing are the songs you sung

On a braver day. Now they are wrong.'

Irwin
Who's that?

Lockwood
Don't you know, sir?

Irwin
No.

Lockwood
Sir!

It's Stevie Smith, sir. Of ‘Not Waving but Drowning' fame.

Irwin
Well, don't tell me that is useless knowledge.

You get an essay on post-imperial decline, losing an empire and finding a role, all that stuff, that quote is the perfect way to end it.

Akthar
Couldn't do that, sir.

It's not education. It's culture.

Irwin
How much more stuff like that have you got up your sleeves?

The bell goes
.

Lockwood
All sorts, sir!

The train! The train!

Scripps plays a theme from Rachmaninov's Second
Piano Concerto
.

Posner
(
Celia Johnson
) I really meant to do it.

I stood there right on the edge.

But I couldn't. I wasn't brave enough.

I would like to be able to say it was the thought of you and the children that prevented me but it wasn't.

I had no thoughts at all.

Only an overwhelming desire not to feel anything at all ever again.

Not to be unhappy any more.

I went back into the refreshment room.

That's when I nearly fainted.

Irwin
What is all this?

Scripps
(
Cyril Raymond
) Laura.

Posner
(
Celia Johnson
) Yes, dear.

Scripps
(
Cyril Raymond
) Whatever your dream was, it wasn't a very happy one was it?

Posner
(
Celia Johnson
) No.

Scripps
(
Cyril Raymond
) Is there anything I can do to help?

Posner
(
Celia Johnson
) You always help, dear.

Scripps
(
Cyril Raymond
) You've been a long way away.

Thank you for coming back to me.

She cries and he embraces her
.

Irwin
God knows why you've learned
Brief Encounter
.

Boys
Oh very good, sir. Full marks, sir.

Irwin
But I think you ought to know this lesson has been a complete waste of time.

Dakin
Like Mr Hector's lessons then, sir. They're a waste of time, too.

Irwin
Yes, you little smart-arse, but he's not trying to get you through an exam.

Staff room
.

Mrs Lintott
So have the boys given you a nickname?

Irwin
Not that I'm aware of.

Mrs Lintott
A nickname is an achievement … both in the sense of something won and also in its armorial sense of a badge, a blazon.

Unsurprisingly, I am Tot or Totty. Some irony there, one feels.

Irwin
Hector has no nickname.

Mrs Lintott
Yes he has: Hector.

Irwin
But he's called Hector.

Mrs Lintott
And that's his nickname too. He isn't called Hector. His name's Douglas, though the only person I've ever heard address him as such is his somewhat unexpected wife.

Irwin
Posner came to see me yesterday. He has a problem.

Mrs Lintott
No nickname, but at least you get their problems. I seldom do.

Posner
Sir, I think I may be homosexual.

Irwin
Posner, I wanted to say, you are not yet in a position to be anything.

Mrs Lintott
You're young, of course. I never had that advantage.

Posner
I love Dakin.

Irwin
Does Dakin know?

Posner
Yes. He doesn't think it's surprising. Though Dakin likes girls basically.

Irwin
I sympathised, though not so much as to suggest I might be in the same boat.

Mrs Lintott
With Dakin?

Irwin
With anybody.

Mrs Lintott
That's sensible. One of the hardest things for boys to learn is that a teacher is human. One of the hardest things for a teacher to learn is not to try and tell them.

Posner
Is it a phase, sir?

Irwin
Do you think it's a phase?

Posner
Some of the literature says it will pass.

Irwin
I wanted to say that the literature may say that, but that literature doesn't.