Gray Simon Gray: Plays 3

Quartermaine's Terms; Stage Struck; Close of Play; Rear Column; Month in the Country; Tartuffe
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ISBN: 978-0-571-30762-3
Verlag: Faber & Faber
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 656 Seiten

'The brave little lives that Gray so compassionately illuminates could be lived by any of us, and that's why they arouse emotions that are anything but small.' New York Times on Quartermaine's Terms

Simon Gray was born in 1936. He began his writing career with Colmain (1963), the first of five novels, all published by Faber. He is the author of many plays for TV and radio, also films, including the 1987 adaptation of J L Carr's A Month in the Country, and TV films including Running Late, After Pilkington (winner of the Prix Italia) and Emmy Award-winning Unnatural Pursuits. He wrote more than thirty stage plays amongst them Butley and Otherwise Engaged (which both received Evening Standard Awards for Best Play), Close ofPlay, The Rear Column, Quartermaine's Terms, The Common Pursuit, Hidden Laughter, The Late Middle Classes (winner of the Barclay's Best Play Award), Japes, The Old Masters (his ninth play to be directed by Harold Pinter) and Little Nell, which premiered at the Theatre Royal Bath in 2007, directed by Peter Hall. Little Nell was first broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2006, and Missing Dates in 2008. In 1991 he was made BAFTA Writer of the Year. His acclaimed works of non-fiction are: An Unnatural Pursuit, How's That for Telling 'Em, Fat Lady?, Fat Chance, Enter a Fox,The Smoking Diaries, The Year of the Jouncer, The Last Cigarette and Coda. He was appointed CBE in the 2005 New Year's Honours for his services to Drama and Literature. Simon Gray died in August 2008.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Gray, Simon

Leseproben

Act One

SCENE ONE

Anita Morning, St John.

Quartermaine Oh hello, Anita, but I say, you know – () you look – you look different, don’t you?

Anita Do I? Oh – my hair probably. I’ve put it up.

Quartermaine Well, it looks – looks really terrific! Of course I liked it the other way too, tumbling down your shoulders.

Anita It hasn’t tumbled down my shoulders for three years, St John.

Quartermaine Oh. How was it, then, before you changed it?

Anita Back in a ponytail. ()

Quartermaine That’s it. Yes. Well, I liked it like that, too.

Anita Thank you. Oh, by the way, Nigel asked me to apologise again for having to cancel dinner. He was afraid he was a little abrupt on the phone.

Quartermaine Oh Lord no, not at all – besides, it’s lucky he abrupt, you know how Mrs Harris hates me using the phone, she stands right beside me glowering, but I managed to understand exactly what he was getting at, something to do with – with a lecture he had to prepare, wasn’t it?

Anita No, it was the new magazine they’re starting. The first issue’s coming out shortly and they still haven’t got enough material so they had to call a panic editorial meeting – it went on until three in the morning –

Quartermaine Oh. Poor old Nigel. But it sounds tremendously – tremendously exciting –

Anita Oh, yes. Well, they’re all very excited about it, anyway, they’re determined it shouldn’t just be another little Cambridge literary magazine, you know, but they want to preserve the Cambridge style and tone. Anyway, I’m sorry we couldn’t have the dinner, and at such short notice. Did you find anything else to do?

Quartermaine Oh yes, yes, I was fine, don’t worry, tell Nigel, because just after he phoned, old Henry phoned, to invite me around.

Anita What luck. For dinner?

Quartermaine No, to babysit, actually.

Anita To babysit. But their oldest – Susan isn’t it? – must be nearly fourteen.

QuartermaineYes, but apparently she’s working away for her O-levels – she’s very bright – taking it years in advance and all that, so they wanted her not to have to worry about the young ones, you see – in fact, they really hadn’t meant to go out, and then they discovered that there was some film they wanted to see at the Arts, some old German classic they seem to be very fond of, about – about a child-murderer as far as I could make out from what Henry told me. So that was all right.

Anita You enjoyed it, then?

Quartermaine Oh Lord yes – well, children, you know, are such – such – it took me a bit of time to get them used to me, of course, as the smallest one, the one they call little Fanny – very charming, very charming – cried when she saw me – she hates it when Henry and Fanny go out, you see – and then the boy – my word, what a little devil, full of mischief, told me little Fanny had drowned in the bath and when I ran in there she was – lying face down – hair floating around – and I stood there thinking, you know – () – Lord, what am I going to say to Henry and Fanny particularly when they get back, especially after seeing a film like that – but it turned out it was only an enormous Raggedy Ann doll, and little Fanny was hiding under her bed – because Ben had told her I was going to eat her up – () But I got them settled down in the end, in fact it would have been sooner if Susan hadn’t kept coming out of her room to scream at them for interrupting her studying – and anyway Henry and Fanny came back quite early. In about an hour, as a matter of fact.

Anita Well, at least you had a bit of an evening with them, then.

Quartermaine Oh rather – except that Fanny had a terrible headache from straining to read the subtitles, that’s why they’d had to leave, a very poor print apparently – then Henry got involved in a – an argument with Ben, who’d got up when he heard them come in, so I felt, you know, they rather wanted me out of the way –

Oh hello, Mark, top of the morning to you, have a good weekend?

Anita () Are you all right?

Sackling Yes, yes, fine, fine. ()

Anita Are you growing a beard?

Sackling What? Oh Christ! () I forgot!

Anita But there must be several days’ stubble there.

Sackling Haven’t been to bed, you see. All weekend.

Quartermaine Ah, been hard at it, eh?

Sackling What?

Quartermaine Hard at it. The old writing.

Terrific!

Anita Oh, I’ve got a message from Nigel, by the way, he asked me to ask you to hurry up with an extract, they’re desperate to get it into the first issue, he says don’t worry about whether it’s self-contained, they can always shove it in as ‘Work in Progress’ or something.

Sackling Right.

Anita You look to me as if you’ve overdone it – are you sure you’re all right?

Quartermaine I say, how’s old Camelia?

Sackling () Oh fine! just – fine!

Quartermaine Terrific, and little Tom too?

Sackling Tom too, oh yes, Tom too.

Quartermaine The last time I saw him he was teething, standing there in his high chair dribbling away like anything, while Camelia was sitting on old Mark’s lap making faces at him with orange peel in her mouth –

What? Oh – oh Lord!

Sackling Sorry – sorry – I’ll be all right – still – still digesting.

Quartermaine Something you had for breakfast, is it? Not kidneys – they can give you terrible heartburn – especially with mushrooms –

Mmmm?

Anita Do you want to talk about it?

Sackling I don’t want anyone – anyone else to know – especially not Thomas or Eddie – don’t want them dripping their – their filthy compassion all over me.

Quartermaine What?

Anita We’re to keep it to ourselves, St John.

Quartermaine Oh Lord, yes. Of course. What, though?

Sackling She’s left me.

Quartermaine Who?

Anita Camelia, of course.

Quartermaine What! Old Camelia! Oh no!

Sackling Taking Tom – taking Tom with her.

Quartermaine Oh, not little Tom too!

Sackling Tom too.

Anita Well, did she – say why?

Sackling () She – she – () I was upstairs in the attic – writing away – as far as I knew she was downstairs where she usually is – in the kitchen or – ironing – with the television on. And Tom in bed, of course. So I wrote on and on – I felt inspired, quite inspired, a passage about – about what I’d felt when I saw Tom coming out of her womb – so shiny and whole and beautiful – a wonderful passage – full of – full of my love for her and him – and when I finished I went downstairs to her – to read it to her – as I always do when it’s something I’m burning with – and she wasn’t there – the house was very still, empty, but I didn’t think – never occurred to me – so I went up the stairs and into our bedroom and – all her clothes – the suitcases everything – gone – and this – this on the pillow.