The Living Room Read online

  JAMES: Forgive me, but so far you haven’t been very—precise.

  MICHAEL: You said you had no authority. I agree with you. I’m not going to answer.

  HELEN: Then we can only assume the worst.

  JAMES: Speak for yourself, Helen. I shall do no such thing.

  HELEN: Where did you spend the night before last, Mr Dennis? It wasn’t true that you stayed in the village, was it?

  MICHAEL: No.

  HELEN: Why did you tell us that?

  MICHAEL: I had booked a room.

  HELEN: But when Mrs Dennis telephoned …

  MICHAEL: Two people are on trial. I won’t answer any questions—unless Rose wants me to. I think you had better let me talk to her.

  HELEN: But you won’t be able to see her again, Mr Dennis.

  MICHAEL: That’s melodramatic and impracticable. [With sudden fear] She’s not ill, is she?

  JAMES: No.

  MICHAEL: You are not dealing with two children, Miss Browne.

  HELEN: One is a child.

  MICHAEL: Legally, yes, for another year.

  HELEN: I agree you are hardly a child. How many children have you, Mr Dennis?

  MICHAEL: None.

  HELEN: Why do you want to see Rose again?

  MICHAEL: The will …

  JAMES: Go on being frank. I like you better that way.

  MICHAEL [stung]: I love her. Is that frank enough for you?

  HELEN: Frank? It’s—it’s revolting. Seducing a child at her mother’s funeral.

  MICHAEL: You take your psychology out of library books, Miss Browne.

  [HELEN begins to speak, but JAMES interrupts her.]

  JAMES: You’ve asked your questions, Helen. Now leave us alone.

  HELEN: Did you hear him admit that …

  JAMES: There’s ho point in anger. We only get angry because we are hurt. And our hurt is not of importance in this case. We are dealing with more important people.

  HELEN: Are you calling him…

  JAMES: Of course he’s more important than we are. You and I are only capable of self-importance, Helen. He’s still in the middle of life. He’s capable of suffering.

  HELEN: I wish you wouldn’t preach at me, James.

  JAMES: I’m sorry. Sometimes I remember I’m a priest. Please go away.

  HELEN: James, will you at least promise …

  JAMES: Helen, I can’t bear your voice when it gets on one note. We are too near death, you and I …

  HELEN: Oh, you’re impossible! [She leaves.]

  [A pause.]

  JAMES: I knew that word would do the trick.

  MICHAEL: What word?

  JAMES: Death.

  [A pause.]

  What are we going to do about her?

  MICHAEL: Miss Browne seems quite capable …

  JAMES: I meant Rose. Rose knew you were married?

  MICHAEL: Of course.

  JAMES: You said this was your second trial today?

  [MICHAEL moves restlessly up and down the room, coming to a stop at intervals by the chair.]

  MICHAEL: When I got home last night my wife was in bed with the door locked. Like a jury after the evidence has been heard. This morning she gave me her verdict of guilty.

  JAMES: Was it a just one?

  MICHAEL: Do you believe in justice? [With angry irony] Of course. I forgot. You believe in a just God. The all-wise Judge.

  JAMES: That kind of justice has nothing to do with a judge. [He turns his head and follows MICHAEL’S movements.] It’s a mathematical term. We talk of a just line, don’t we? God’s exact, that’s all. He’s not a judge. An absolute knowledge of every factor—the conscious and the unconscious—yes, even heredity, all your Freudian urges. That’s why He’s merciful.

  MICHAEL [coming to a halt by JAMES’S chair]: I know what I seem like to you. I am a middle aged man. Whose wife won’t divorce him.

  JAMES: That wouldn’t have helped.

  MICHAEL: But I mean to marry Rose.

  JAMES: It would be better to live with her. She’d be less bound to you then.

  MICHAEL: How I hate your logic.

  JAMES: I sometimes hate this body cut off at the knees. But my legs won’t exist however much I hate the lack of them. It’s a waste of time hating facts.

  MICHAEL: I believe in different facts.

  [A pause.]

  Father, we have our heretics in psychology too. I believe in the analysis of dreams, but sometimes I have had a dream so simple and brief that there seems to be nothing there to analyse—a shape, a few colours, an experience of beauty, that’s all. Then I refuse to look further.

  JAMES: What has that to do …?

  MICHAEL: Oh, I can analyse my own love. I can give you all the arguments. Pride that a girl can love me, the idea that time is hurrying to an end, the sense of final vigour which comes before old age, the fascination innocence may have when you’ve ceased to believe in it—it’s like seeing a unicorn in Hyde Park. It’s true, Father, you can analyse every dream, but sometimes the analysis doesn’t seem to make sense. An anxiety neurosis, I say, and then the face stares back at me so young and lovely—why should I explain my love any other way?

  JAMES: You don’t have to convince a priest that the truth seems all wrong sometimes. I learnt that long ago in the confessional. All the same, I’d rather you were dead. Or somebody different.

  MICHAEL: Different?

  JAMES: Say, like your grandfather. He may have visited a brothel once in a while, when he went abroad, but he believed you only loved the person you married. He wasn’t tempted to leave his wife—society was so strong—any more than you are tempted to commit murder. You may be a better man, but he caused much less trouble.

  MICHAEL: It wasn’t what I meant to do.

  JAMES: You haven’t much imagination. How can you have a love affair without trouble?

  MICHAEL: I don’t want a ‘love-affair’. I meant to break it gently to my wife—later, when there wouldn’t have been any of this bitterness.

  JAMES: I was wrong. You’ve got a great imagination. If you think you can leave a woman without bitterness.

  MICHAEL: My wife and I—we haven’t been lovers in a long while.

  JAMES: You’ve been companions, haven’t you?

  MICHAEL: I didn’t mean to hurt anyone. I had planned nothing. I hardly noticed Rose until two months ago. I came to see her mother when the doctors had diagnosed angina. She knew she might die any time, walking too far, lifting a weight. She wanted to talk about Rose. I wasn’t a Catholic, but she trusted me. We both lost the man we cared for most when her husband died. Rose came into the room. I didn’t bother to look up, but when she bent down to kiss her mother I smelt her hair. Then she went out of the room. She was like a landscape you see from the train, and you want to stop just there.

  JAMES: Well?

  MICHAEL: I pulled the communication cord.

  JAMES: And there’s always a fine attached.

  MICHAEL: But I want to pay it. Alone. Not the others.

  JAMES: Was my sister right? When you went down for the funeral, were you planning …?

  MICHAEL: Not even then. Oh, perhaps I’d be shocked too, if it weren’t myself and Rose. You can’t shock yourself, can you? ‘The funeral bakemeats did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables’. But there hasn’t been a marriage. And now there can’t be. What do we do?

  JAMES: You’re the psychologist. Let’s hear the wisdom of Freud, Jung, Adler. Haven’t they all the answers you need? You can only get a priest’s answer from me.

  MICHAEL: I’m asking for the priest’s answer. Then I’ll know what I have to fight.

  JAMES: There’s only one answer I can give. You’re doing wrong to your wife, to Rose, to yourself—and to the God you don’t believe in. Go away. Don’t see her, don’t write to her, don’t answer her letters if she writes to you. She’ll have a terrible few weeks. So will you. You aren’t a cruel man.

  MICHAEL: And in the end …?

  JAMES: We hav
e to trust God. Everything will be all right.

  MICHAEL [angrily]: All right—what a queer idea you have of all right. I’ve left her. Fine. So she’ll always associate love with betrayal. When she loves a man again, there’ll always be that in her mind … love doesn’t last. She’ll grow her defence mechanisms until she dies inside them. And I’ll go on as I have for the last ten years, having a woman now and then, for a night, on the sly, substitutes, living with a woman I don’t desire—a hysteric. She has something real for her hysteria now, but for ten years she’s invented things. Ever since our child died. Sometimes I find myself thinking she invented even that. I wasn’t there.

  JAMES: Can’t you even find a cure for your own wife?

  MICHAEL: No. Because I’m part of her insecurity. I’m inside her neurosis as I’m inside her house.

  JAMES: So you’ll burn down the house. For God’s sake don’t talk any more psychology at me. Just tell me what you want.

  MICHAEL: To live with Rose. To live an ordinary quiet human life. To have a family. She can change her name to mine for convenience. For the sake of the children. So no one will know. Perhaps one day my wife will divorce me, and we can marry.

  JAMES [ironically]: I shouldn’t take the trouble. Rose wouldn’t want a fake marriage.

  MICHAEL: You don’t know her.

  JAMES: I know one side of her better than you do. You can’t fob off a Catholic with a registrar’s signature and call it a marriage. We do as many wrong things as you do, but we have the sense to know it. I don’t say she wouldn’t be happy—in a way—as long as the desire lasted. Then she’d leave you—even with the registrar’s signature. I’m sorry for you, being mixed up like that, with one of us.

  MICHAEL: I’ll risk it.

  JAMES: And your wife?

  MICHAEL: A hysteric will go on with a scene until she gets what she wants. There are only two things you can do. Give her what she wants, and that brings the next scene closer—she smells success, like a dog a bitch. Or just walk out. She can’t make a scene alone. I’ve walked out for half hours long enough. I shall walk out for good. Father, I sound cruel. I’m not. I do love her. She’s my wife. She ruined her health over the child. I want to make her happy. I’ve tried to, but I can’t go on. It’s no good going on—for any of us. We’ll break sooner or later, and it only prolongs the pain. What’s the matter? [He goes over to the chair.]

  [JAMES is trembling. His head has dropped.]

  JAMES: It’s a terrible world.

  MICHAEL: Can’t you forget you’re a priest for a while?

  JAMES [with bitter self-reproach]: I forget it twenty-two hours a day.

  MICHAEL: As a man, can you see Rose happy in this house—three old people and all these closed rooms? Why closed?

  JAMES [in a low, ashamed voice]: They were afraid to live where anyone had died. So they closed the bedrooms.

  MICHAEL [too patly]: So that’s it. I’ve come across cases like that. Compulsive neurosis. People who won’t grow up so that they believe they won’t die.

  JAMES: How you love your snap judgements, Dennis.

  MICHAEL: What a household for Rose. What’s going to happen when one of them dies—or you die? Can you see her helping to shift the furniture into another hiding place? Is that the life for a girl?

  JAMES: You’ve got plenty of reason on your side, but—

  [A pause.]

  MICHAEL [he has a sense of victory]: But what?

  JAMES: God has plenty of mercy.

  MICHAEL: You can’t expect me to depend on that.

  JAMES: I don’t know that we do, often.

  MICHAEL: It’s no good asking your sister. But I ask you. Let me speak to her.

  JAMES: Can’t you let her alone for a little to make up her own mind?

  MICHAEL: Or your sister to make it up for her?

  JAMES [his last appeal]: You’re a psychologist. You know how often young girls fall in love with a man your age, looking for a father.

  MICHAEL [defensively]: What of it?

  JAMES: Rose never knew her father.

  [He has got under MICHAEL’S skin. His reaction is unnecessarily vehement.]

  MICHAEL: All right. I may be a father substitute. I don’t care a damn, if it makes her happy. It’s as good a reason for love, isn’t it, as black hair or a good profile? Hair alters, a man grows a second chin. A substitute may give satisfaction for a lifetime.

  JAMES: You can’t think in terms of a lifetime.

  MICHAEL: I might die before she got tired of me.

  JAMES: You might. It’s a terrible thing to have to depend on, though.

  [A bell rings below.]

  MICHAEL: Can I go and find her?

  JAMES: She’s not in the house. Helen saw to that.

  MICHAEL: Can I wait till she returns?

  JAMES: I can’t turn you out, can I?

  MICHAEL [he hears footsteps on the stairs]: That’s Rose.

  JAMES: It’s only Mary.

  MICHAEL: No. I know her step. She’s coming up. Am I going to see her with your consent? Or without?

  JAMES: What are you going to say to her?

  MICHAEL: I’m going to ask her to pack her bag.

  [ROSE enters. She sees MICHAEL with surprise and pleasure.]

  ROSE: But you telephoned. They said you’d telephoned.

  MICHAEL: What about?

  ROSE: You couldn’t come. You had to go away. For a week.

  MICHAEL: I never telephoned. They didn’t want me to see you.

  ROSE: But that’s absurd. Uncle—you weren’t concerned?

  JAMES: No. He wants to talk to you. You can push me out.

  ROSE [looking from one to the other]: What’s happened? What’s it all about? You, both of you …

  JAMES: He wants you to pack your bag.

  ROSE [to MICHAEL]: You mean—go away? They know all about us? Do you want me to go away now, today? [She speaks with excitement and no apprehension.]

  [MICHAEL watches her with growing uneasiness. She is too young and unprepared.]

  How lucky I never unpacked the trunk. I can be ready in a few minutes. [She turns to her uncle with sudden remorse.] Oh, Uncle, you must think we are very wicked.

  JAMES: No. Just ignorant. And innocent.

  ROSE [with pride]: Not innocent.

  JAMES: Please open the door, Rose.

  ROSE: I didn’t want to hurt you. It just happened this way.

  JAMES: Don’t worry about me.

  ROSE: I know it’s wrong, but I don’t care. Uncle, we’re going to be happy.

  JAMES: Is he?

  [ROSE looks quickly at MICHAEL. He doesn’t look a happy man.]

  ROSE: Darling, is anything the matter?

  MICHAEL: My wife knows.

  ROSE [with the glibness and unfeelingness of youth]: It had to happen sooner or later. Was she very angry?

  MICHAEL: Not exactly angry.

  ROSE: You’ve had an awful time.

  MICHAEL: Other people are having an awful time.

  ROSE: Yes, of course. It’s terribly sad, but we’ll be all right.

  You’ll see. And people get over everything.

  MICHAEL: She cried a great deal. I left her crying.

  JAMES: Please open the door. I feel like an accomplice.

  ROSE: I’m sorry, Uncle. [She opens the door for his chair to pass.]

  JAMES: Come and see me when you’ve done.

  ROSE: You don’t think I’d go away without saying good-bye?

  [Turning to MICHAEL after shutting the door.] Darling, tell me what you’ve planned.

  MICHAEL: My plans haven’t been a success. My wife won’t divorce me. We may never be able to marry.

  ROSE [with momentary disappointment]: Oh! [She sweeps her disappointment aside.] It doesn’t really matter, does it? It wouldn’t have been a real marriage, anyway. And—somebody may die.

  MICHAEL: You’re a Catholic. I never knew any Catholics before—except your mother.

  ROSE: Perhaps I’m only half one. Fa
ther wasn’t.

  MICHAEL: You never knew him, did you?

  ROSE: No. But I’ve seen lots of photographs. He had a nose rather like yours.

  MICHAEL [with bitterness]: I never noticed that.

  ROSE: Shall I pack now? [She begins to get her things together in a small suitcase while the dialogue continues.]

  MICHAEL: You don’t mind—about the Church?

  ROSE [lightly as she goes to the bathroom for her spongebag and pyjamas]: Oh, I expect it will come all right in the end. I shall make a deathbed confession and die in the odour of sanctity.

  MICHAEL [as she comes out again]: Our children will be illegitimate.

  ROSE: Bastards are the best, so Shakespeare says. [She folds up the pyjamas and puts them in her case.]

  We did King John my last term at school. The nuns hurried over those bits. There was a nice phrase for bastards—‘born under the rose’. I liked Faulconbridge. Oh, what an age ago it seems—

  MICHAEL: Your aunts won’t let you come back here.

  ROSE [crossing to a cupboard to fetch a frock]: Do you think I care? Darling, I can’t bear this house. It gives me the creeps. Do you know why they’ve closed the rooms?

  MICHAEL: Yes.

  ROSE: I can’t help wondering which of them will die where. If one of them died in here, they wouldn’t have enough rooms to live in. It’s really awful. Like something in Edgar Allen Poe.

  MICHAEL: What a lot of books you’ve read.

  ROSE: You aren’t angry, about something, are you? I’ll do anything you say. Just tell me where to go, and I’ll go. Like Ruth. ‘Your people shall be my people.’ I suppose your people are all psychologists.

  MICHAEL: Not all.

  ROSE: I’ve read Freud in Penguin. The Psychology of Every day Life.

  MICHAEL: You have, have you?

  ROSE: Darling, something’s fretting you. You haven’t fallen in love with another woman?

  MICHAEL: No. I finished all that with you.

  ROSE: I shall never be sure of that. You didn’t waste much time with me.

  MICHAEL: I haven’t much time to waste.