The Complaisant Lover Read online

CLIVE: I don’t go to bed with the girls in Curzon Street.

  ANN: Never?

  CLIVE: I’ve done it. Two or three times, I suppose. When I’ve been fed up and alone.

  ANN: You aren’t alone now?

  CLIVE: Yes. I’m very alone.

  ANN: Well, then, why go to Curzon Street when there’s me?

  CLIVE: Lust isn’t very strong, Ann, unless there’s love, too. Curzon Street takes only half an hour. And there are twenty-four hours in a day.

  ANN: We have things in common. Books.

  CLIVE: Riders of the Purple Sage is a subject we might exhaust.

  ANN: How cold and beastly you are.

  CLIVE: Only sensible.

  ANN: You’ll be able to boast now, won’t you, that you’ve had an immoral proposal from a girl of nineteen.

  CLIVE: I’m not the boasting kind. I’ve been trained in a different school, Ann. You see, the first woman I loved was happily married.

  ANN: Have you loved a lot of people?

  CLIVE: Only four. It’s not a high score at thirty-eight.

  ANN: What happened to them, Clive?

  CLIVE: In the end the husbands won.

  ANN: Were they all married?

  CLIVE: Yes.

  ANN: Why do you choose married women?

  CLIVE: I don’t know. Perhaps I fall in love with experience.

  ANN: One has to begin.

  CLIVE: Perhaps I don’t care for innocence. Perhaps I’m trying to repeat that first time. Perhaps it’s envy of other men, and I want to prove myself better than they are. I don’t know, Ann. But it’s the school I’ve been brought up in. There are no girls of nineteen in my school. We don’t throw the school cap over the windmill, and there are no lessons in “all for love and the world well lost.”

  ANN: You don’t sound so happy in your school.

  CLIVE: I hate the lessons, but I’m very good at them.

  ANN: What lessons, Clive?

  CLIVE: Oh, how to make a husband like you. How to stay in the same house as the two of them and not to mind that, when night comes, she’ll pay you a short visit if the coast is clear and he’ll sleep away the whole night beside her. Then, of course, there are all kinds of elementary lessons. On passports, hotel registers, and on times when it’s necessary to take adjoining rooms. And how to postpone discovery in spite of those kind mutual friends whom you always meet at unlikely little hotels in the Midlands.

  ANN: Does the husband always discover?

  CLIVE: They always have. And then the worst lessons begin.

  ANN: You mean—about divorce?

  CLIVE: No. I’ve heard about divorce. I’ve never encountered it. In my case the husbands have always been complaisant. You see, they love their wives too much to leave them, so they say. I seem to have always had an eye for very lovable women.

  ANN: I suppose I’m terribly young, Clive, but I don’t understand.

  CLIVE: And people would call me a cad for telling you.

  ANN: I have to learn.

  CLIVE: Don’t marry an Englishman, Ann. Englishmen prefer their friends and their clubs to their wives, but they have great staying power and a great sense of duty. The lover relieves them of their duty. And then you see without that—trouble, a beautiful brother-and-sister relationship can develop. It’s very touching. And so damned boring for the lover.

  ANN: Are you in love now?

  CLIVE: Yes.

  ANN: And that’s how it is?

  CLIVE: I tell myself it can’t happen that way again. I’ll see that it won’t happen that way.

  ANN: You want to marry her?

  CLIVE: Yes.

  ANN: I wish you wouldn’t tell her—whoever she is—about me.

  CLIVE: I’ll try not to. But, Ann, when you’re in love, you don’t have secrets.

  ANN: I’ve proved that, haven’t I? I’d better go and look at the tele after all. Are you coming, Clive?

  CLIVE: No. His Master’s Voice is bad enough. I can’t bear His Master’s Eye.

  Mary enters.

  MARY: You two still talking away?

  ANN: About Zane Grey. You know it’s my only subject, Mary. (She leaves.)

  MARY: She’s upset. Why did she stay behind, Clive?

  CLIVE: Oh, you know what the young are like. A crisis.

  MARY: Still worried about her puppy-fat?

  CLIVE: Yes.

  MARY: I wish I was her age.

  CLIVE: I don’t.

  MARY: What do you think of Victor?

  CLIVE: He’s been very kind to me.

  MARY: Why shouldn’t he be? He has no suspicion.

  CLIVE: Are you sure? I thought that cigar …

  MARY: I know Victor.

  CLIVE: Yes. Of course. I forgot that.

  MARY: It was sweet of you to come.

  CLIVE: I didn’t want to.

  MARY: It was necessary, Clive. If we are to see more of each other. Now he knows you, he won’t worry.

  CLIVE: That’s kind of him.

  MARY: He is kind, Clive. Why don’t you like him?

  CLIVE: Perhaps he’ll grow on me in time. With his anecdotes. He has a great many.

  MARY: They come his way.

  CLIVE: He reminded me of my dentist. I’m sorry. Forgive me, Mary.

  MARY: Why should I? He is a dentist.

  CLIVE: Oh. You never told me that.

  MARY: We haven’t spoken of him much, have we? He’s not been your favourite subject these few weeks. And it’s not exactly a glamorous profession.

  CLIVE: Who cares?

  MARY: I didn’t want you to laugh at him, that’s all.

  CLIVE: Are you so fond of him?

  MARY: Yes. (Pause.)

  CLIVE: When are we going to get some time together, Mary?

  MARY: I only missed one day with you this week.

  CLIVE: You know what I mean by time.

  MARY: Dear, I promise. Sometime, somehow. But it’s difficult. It wouldn’t be safe in England.

  CLIVE: I don’t want to be safe.

  MARY: But …

  CLIVE: All right. We can go abroad.

  MARY: I’ve spent my hundred pounds with the children.

  CLIVE: So have I. But there are ways. I can fix it. Couldn’t we … next week …

  MARY: Sally comes back next week for half-term. I have to be here. Then there’s a Dental Association dinner, and Victor would think it odd if I was away. I always go with him.

  CLIVE: After that …

  MARY: Robin’s got to have three teeth out. Don’t look angry. Even a dentist’s child has tooth-trouble. And I have to take him.

  CLIVE: Doesn’t your husband pull them out?

  MARY: Of course he doesn’t.

  CLIVE: Surely you could change that appointment?

  MARY: You don’t know how difficult appointments are. We’d have to wait a month for another.

  CLIVE: And then, I suppose, it’s almost time for Sally to come home again.

  MARY: You shouldn’t have chosen a woman with a family, Clive. My job is full time just as yours is. You can’t pack up and go away whenever you like either.

  CLIVE: All the same, I’d do it if you asked me to.

  MARY (sharply): Perhaps children are more important than second-hand books. (Pause.) Clive, don’t let’s get angry with each other—not tonight. It’s been so good seeing you here. In my home. It’s as though our life together were really beginning.

  CLIVE: Cosy evenings with the dentist!

  MARY: Are you going to use that against me now? What’s wrong with being a dentist? It’s more useful than selling Zane Greys to teen-agers.

  CLIVE: The teen-ager asked me to go away with her.

  MARY: Ann!

  CLIVE: Any time I liked. For as long as I liked.

  MARY: What did you say?

  CLIVE: Naturally I refused the invitation.

  MARY: Poor Ann.

  CLIVE: I also promised, if I could, to keep it secret. What liars and cheats love makes of us.

  M
ARY: You should have said yes. There wouldn’t be any complications with Ann. She wouldn’t have to write postcards home and buy presents for the children. She wouldn’t remember suddenly in the middle of dinner that she’d forgotten to buy a pair of football boots. She’s free. Do you think I don’t envy her? I even envy her virginity.

  CLIVE: That’s not important.

  MARY: Oh yes, it is. Men are jealous of a past if there’s nothing else to be jealous of. You need your bloody sign.

  CLIVE: I need a few weeks’ peace of mind. If you’re with me, I can sleep because you are not with him.

  MARY: I’ve told you over and over again—I’ve promised you—we haven’t slept together for five years. But I have no sign to prove it.

  CLIVE: After a dental dinner and a drink or two things happen …

  MARY: When that dies out, Clive, it doesn’t come back. And sooner or later it always dies. Even for us it would die in time. It dies quicker in a marriage, that’s all. It’s killed by the children, by the chars who give notice, by the price of meat.

  CLIVE: If only you had separate rooms.

  MARY: The space between the beds is just as wide as a passage.

  CLIVE: When he wakes up you’re the first thing he sees. I envy that.

  MARY: I’m up first. Clive, I’d move into the spare room, but he’d notice it. Sometimes bed-time is the only chance we have to talk. Dentists are very busy men.

  CLIVE: I need a chance, too.

  MARY: What you and I talk about is so different. With Victor I talk about Sally’s room which needs re-painting. Can we postpone it till the autumn? Her school report says she has a talent for music. Ought she to have extra lessons in the holidays? And then there’s the dinner which went wrong. Too much garlic in the salad and the potatoes were undercooked. Clive, that’s the sort of talk that kills desire. Only kindness grows in that soil.

  CLIVE: A lot of kindness.

  MARY: Yes. (Robin’s voice calling: “Mother. Mother.”) The show must be over.

  CLIVE: So we can’t be together because of the dental dinner? Is Victor speaking on the problems of tartar? Do you dance with the other dentists?

  MARY: Clive, what makes you rough tonight?

  CLIVE: Perhaps a trick cigar.

  MARY: Or refusing an invitation to an adventure?

  Robin’s voice nearer: “Mother. Mother.”

  CLIVE: I want one week with you—I might be able to persuade you then.

  MARY: Persuade me of what?

  CLIVE: To marry me.

  MARY: Yes. It’s possible.

  CLIVE: Or he might discover where we’d been.

  MARY: Yes.

  CLIVE: He’d divorce you, wouldn’t he, if he knew?

  MARY: How can I tell?

  CLIVE: Or would you tell him how sorry you were and ask to be taken back to the twin bed?

  MARY: I’d never say I was sorry. I love you, Clive.

  Robin enters as they move towards each other.

  Mary is quick to adapt her words, quicker than Clive could ever have been.

  MARY: I really do love you for all the trouble you take to find Ann and me the cheapest books. We’ve ruined you between the two of us.

  ROBIN: Mother, the tele’s terrible tonight. Father says it’s the x-ray next door.

  MARY: That’s your father’s joke, dear. Mr. Saunders wouldn’t have a patient at this hour.

  ROBIN: He says Mr. Saunders works twenty-four hours a day because his patients are so rich. He won’t take National Health.

  MARY: Where are the others, Robin?

  ROBIN: Oh, listening to something political.

  MARY: Have you finished your homework, dear?

  ROBIN: I can finish it in the morning.

  MARY: Then be off to bed now. It’s late.

  ROBIN: You won’t forget to say good night?

  MARY: No

  ROBIN: Do you think …?

  MARY: It’s too late to think. Off with you.

  ROBIN: What does sesquioxide mean? It’s in my French dictionary.

  MARY: I don’t know. What does the dictionary say it is in English?

  ROBIN: It says in English it’s sesquioxide.

  Robin goes out again.

  MARY: He and Victor have a lot in common. You see what I mean now, don’t you? A moment ago I could have slept with you on the sofa. I don’t mean sleep. I wanted to touch you. I wanted your mouth. Now … homework, Mr. Saunders’s x-rays, tucking a child up in bed. Don’t let’s have a family, Clive, whatever happens.

  CLIVE: I’d have liked your child.

  MARY: That’s what you think now. But love and marriage don’t go together. Not our kind of love. Please, Clive, be patient. You don’t believe how much I long to say, “All right, nothing else matters, we’ll go away tomorrow, the first plane anywhere. I won’t think about Robin or Victor or Sally’s music lessons. I’ll only think about me. Me.”

  CLIVE: Not me?

  MARY: We’d be too close to know which was which.

  CLIVE: Mary, come back to me tonight.

  MARY: I can’t. How can I?

  CLIVE: Say you are taking the dog for a walk.

  MARY: There is no dog. Only a cat. And cats take their own walks.

  The door opens and Ann comes in. She realizes for the first time with whom Clive is in love.

  ANN: I’m sorry. I didn’t mean …

  MARY: We were only talking about dogs and cats and who likes which.

  ANN: The tele was in bad form tonight.

  MARY: So Robin told us.

  ANN (with relief): Oh, has he been here?

  MARY: Yes. Surely he said good night to you?

  Voices outside and the Howards and Victor enter.

  VICTOR: One for the road. I insist. While I call a taxi.

  MRS. HOWARD: We’ll walk home. It’s a fine night. Don’t you agree, William?

  HOWARD: Yes. Good for Ann’s dieting, too.

  VICTOR: All the more time for a Scotch.

  MRS. HOWARD: Not for me.

  MARY: Nor me.

  Victor fetches the whisky from the sideboard on the dining side of the room. He can be seen pouring out and arranging the glasses on a tray. He shifts the position of one glass. There is something a little too studied about the arranging.

  CLIVE (to Ann): I’ll walk back with you if I may.

  MARY (quickly): There’s no need for you to go yet. It’s only half-past ten.

  CLIVE: I have to be up very early. I’ve got to finish cataloguing.

  MARY: Surely you can choose your own time for that.

  CLIVE: You wouldn’t understand how important a bookseller’s catalogue is.

  ANN: It must be like writing a novel.

  Victor returns with a tray of whisky.

  CLIVE: Yes, I think it is. One has to know what to put in and what to leave out.

  ANN: I’d love to see how you do it.

  CLIVE (his eye on Mary but his speech to Ann): Come in tomorrow morning and I’ll show you. You could help me a lot if it would amuse you.

  ANN: I’d love to help you.

  VICTOR: Take your glass, William.

  Howard takes a quick look at the tray, takes two glasses, and hands one to Clive.

  Victor’s face shows dismay. He puts the tray down but doesn’t take the third glass.

  HOWARD: Here, Root.

  CLIVE: Thanks.

  HOWARD: Your health, Victor. An excellent whisky. Why aren’t you drinking?

  VICTOR (picking up the third glass): I’ll join you in a moment. Got to say good night to Robin.

  Victor starts, glass in hand, towards the sideboard, but Howard pursues him.

  HOWARD: And health to our lovely hostess, Victor. You’ll join us in that, surely.

  VICTOR: I seem to have drowned this whisky. I’ll get myself another.

  HOWARD: I said a health to Mary, Victor. You can’t refuse that. Drink up like a man.

  Victor is cornered. He puts the glass to his mouth, but it is a trick drib
bling glass and the whisky pours down his jacket.

  HOWARD: Hoist with your own petard.

  CLIVE: A dribbling glass now!

  Everyone laughs except Mary and Clive, who watches her.

  HOWARD: He meant that for you, Root. Have you ever thought of trying one of those glasses on a patient, Victor? It might make him laugh in the chair.

  VICTOR: It’s not my lucky evening. I think you and Mary conspired … (He goes to the sideboard and pours himself another drink. Over his shoulder:) The fact is I’m not appreciated, Root. Except by my son.

  MARY: Won’t the whisky stain?

  VICTOR: There wasn’t enough whisky in it, Mary. You know I wouldn’t waste my good Black Label. Well, here’s to the whole pack of you, laughing hyenas though you are. This one is an honest drink. I remember Lord Caton saying once, “I don’t like that pink stuff you put in my glass. Why don’t you give me a whisky? Alcohol kills germs.” I said, “Lord Caton,

  I’ve seen many people cock-eyed from whisky, but I’ve never known any cocci or streptococci, or even staphylococci killed by alcohol yet.” Come along, one more for the road, both of you.

  HOWARD: Not me. We’ve got to keep your hand steady for the sake of your patients. Come on, Margaret.

  MRS. HOWARD: It’s been a lovely evening. We were so glad, too, to have a chance of meeting Mr. Root. (To Clive:) Ann has talked about you so much.

  CLIVE (As Ann holds out her hand): You forget. I’m coming with you.

  ANN: Good night, Mrs. Rhodes. Thank you so much.

  VICTOR: Coats this way. (He leads the way out.)

  HOWARD: Victor’s in good form. A cutlet with us next time, Mary.

  CLIVE: Good night, Mrs. Rhodes, and thank you.

  MARY: We’ll see you again soon?

  CLIVE: I may be going abroad for a while.

  MARY: I’ll drop in tomorrow morning.

  Only Ann is left in the doorway. She watches them.

  CLIVE: Not in the morning. I’m cataloguing with Ann.

  MARY: Oh yes. I forgot.

  She watches him follow Ann out. She stands listening to the sound of good nights. A door closes. She goes to the window and, drawing the curtains apart, watches her guests depart—one of her guests at any rate. A key turns in the lock outside and then a bolt is thrust home. Victor is securing the house for the night. He comes in.

  VICTOR: Windows locked?

  MARY: Yes.

  VICTOR: I think they enjoyed themselves.

  MARY: Yes.

  VICTOR: I liked your young friend, Root.

  MARY: I’m glad.