Priestley Plays Four (3 page)

SAM: Morning. Nice day.

DIMMOCK: I haven’t noticed yet. Too much on my mind.

SAM: Ah! What’s chiefly on my mind is that today is the thirty-first of June.

DIMMOCK:
(Astonished.)
Thirty-first of June?

ANNE:
(Laughing.)
Don’t be an idiot, Sam. There isn’t such a thing.

SAM:
(Unruffled.)
So everyone’s been telling me. But I woke up feeling it was the thirty-first of June, and I can’t get it out of my head.

DIMMOCK: Sam, why do you keep on working for us? I’ve often wondered.

SAM:
(Thoughtfully but easily.)
Because I’m a bad painter. Not your idea of a bad painter, but my idea of one. So I work for Wallaby, Dimmock, Paly and Tooks – and eat. By the way, who the hell’s Tooks? Or did you, Wallaby and Paly invent him?

DIMMOCK: Tooks is our financial man.

PHIL: First-class fellow!

ANNE: Smart as paint.

DIMMOCK: That’s right. And – between these four walls – a stinker. No, I oughtn’t to have said that.

SAM:
(Now busy with his portfolio.)
It’s the thirty-first of June. Well here we are –
(He takes out a picture in bright colours of MELICENT and puts it on a chair between desk and door.)
This is what I’ve done for
Damosel Stockings
. And I sat up until two this morning getting it right. Now just take it in before you start talking.
(As DIMMOCK and ANNE start staring at the picture, SAM takes PHIL to one side downstage, to speak to him confidentially.)
Phil, who’s this dwarf in red-and-yellow doublet and hose who’s wandering about here?

PHIL:
(Bewildered.)
Dwarf? I haven’t seen a dwarf.

SAM: He’s around.

PHIL: Somebody in the Art Department must be using him as a model.

SAM: He never speaks. Just looks in the door – grins – beckons – then vanishes.

PHIL: Sam, you’re seeing things.

SAM: I hope so. But why a dwarf in red-and-yellow tights?

DIMMOCK:
(Slowly, pronouncing judgement.)
It’s got something.

ANNE: Just what I was thinking, D.D.

DIMMOCK:
(Dubiously.)
On the other hand –

ANNE: Quite. The
Damosel
crowd are tough.

DIMMOCK: What do you think, Phil?

PHIL:
(Answering at once.)
Feel what you do, D.D. Yes and No.

DIMMOCK: Let’s stop looking for a minute, then take it by surprise.

ANNE: Who was your model, Sam?

SAM: Didn’t have one. Not in this world anyhow. It’s a story, but I don’t have to tell it.

DIMMOCK: Why not? Let’s have a drink. The usual?
(Into intercom.)
Peggy, let’s have four large gin and tonics.

The singing commercial is now heard again but it is soon drowned by the pneumatic drill on the other side
.

DIMMOCK:
(When it has stopped.)
Nobody can say I’m not keen and sharp. I worry over the firm and the accounts sixteen hours a day. But now and again I wonder if we aren’t all barmy.
(PEGGY, a pretty girl – probably ALISON – enters with four glasses of gin and tonic.)
Thanks, Peggy. Hand ’em round.

SAM:
(As he takes his.)
Thanks, Peggy. Have any of you girls seen a red-and-yellow dwarf about?

PEGGY:
(Seriously.)
No, Mr Penty. Have you lost one?

SAM: No. But I keep seeing one.

PEGGY goes out
.

DIMMOCK: Seeing one
what
, Sam?
(He laughs.)
For a moment I thought you said a red-and-yellow dwarf.

SAM: I did. Well, here’s to Wallaby, Dimmock, and Paly and possibly Tooks!
(As the others drink, he continues.)
Yesterday, when you gave me this
Damosel
job, I sat at my work table, thinking it over. Damosel – knights in armour – castles – King Arthur and the Round Table – dragons – quests – princesses in towers. You know. And then I saw a girl in a medieval costume – through a kind of illuminated little frame – and she smiled at me. She stayed long enough for me to do a rough sketch. Then, twice later, when I was painting and wasn’t sure about her colouring, she appeared again, very sensibly and charmingly, just when I needed her most.

ANNE:
(Teasingly.)
I see you’re devoted to this girl, Sam.

SAM: Certainly. Above all others. This is the girl for me.

DIMMOCK: And all imagination!

SAM: I dare say, but what
is
imagination? Nobody tells us – at least nobody who
has
any imagination. And then, after sitting up half the night trying to re-capture the look of her, I woke up this morning feeling it was the thirty-first of June –

DIMMOCK:
(Cutting in, sharply.)
Sam, you know I’m your friend as well as one of your employers. Now will you do a little thing for me, as a favour?

SAM: Certainly.

DIMMOCK: Good enough.
(Into intercom.)
Is Dr Jarvis still with Mr Paly? He is? Then ask him to come and see me.
(To PHIL and ANNE.)
You two had better go before he comes. This is between Sam and me and the doctor. But – look, Anne – before you go – I’ve got some sample Damosel stockings somewhere –
(He rummages in his desk and then produces several pairs of very fine nylon stockings and gives them to her as he talks.)
Just drape a few of ’em over Sam’s picture – so we can make sure it all hangs together – and one thing isn’t cancelling out another – and so forth –

ANNE:
(As she begins to deal with the stockings.)
Damosel will buy this – if we decide on it – but I’ll have to talk to them hard. Especially Maggie Rogers – she’s got a vogue fixation. There!

PHIL:
(As they prepare to go.)
Anne duckie, I’m not mad about our Mum’s Chum layout – Minnie and Jeff have fallen down on it – tell me what
you
think?

They go out, having finished their drinks. SAM and DIMMOCK look at each other
.

SAM: But why a doctor?

DIMMOCK: A quick check-up – can’t do any harm, can it? He’s a first-class man. Consultant to the Healthovite Company, among other things.
(Enter DR JARVIS. He is exactly as he was in Scene One except that he is now in dark modern clothes.)
Hello, Dr Jarvis! This is Sam Penty, one of our best artists. And he’s not getting his proper sleep – he’s seeing things – girls and dwarfs – thinks today’s the thirty-first of June –

DR JARVIS:
(Going nearer to him.)
Mr Penty, in my experience very few people indeed
are
perfectly well, although they may imagine they are. And you’re probably an imaginative type –

DIMMOCK: He is, he is, doctor.

DR JARVIS: Now, Mr Penty, just relax. Allow me!

DIMMOCK: All for your own good, Sam.

Dr Jarvis does exactly what he did before to MELICENT and speaks in exactly the same way
.

DR JARVIS: An eidetic type – probably hyperthyroid – with an unstable metabolism involving both iodine and calcium deficits. May have been some recent effect of the adrenal cortex on the calcium metabolism antagonistic to the functioning of the parathyroid glands. Some possible kidney trouble – sleeplessness – overstimulation of the eidetic image-creating function – chiefly due to the parathyroid deficiency and a heightening of the thyroid function – so a definite thyroid-parathyroid imbalance – resulting in an apparent objectivisation of the imagery of the eidetic imagination – phantasy states – hallucinations –

DIMMOCK: That’s it, doctor. Phantasy states and hallucinations. Just what Sam’s suffering from. Now can’t you give him something that’ll put him right?

DR JARVIS:
(Exactly as in Scene One.)
I’ll tell my chemist to send round some calcium and Vitamin D tablets to be taken three times a day. I’ll have him make up a mixture with Hexamine, quinnic acid, and theobromine in it – to be taken twice a day. A bromide mixture, night and morning. Avoid an excess of alcohol and too many carbohydrates.

DIMMOCK: There you are, Sam! First-class, doctor! You went straight to the root of the trouble. Very grateful!

DR JARVIS: Glad to be of service. Good-morning, gentlemen.
(He goes out briskly.)

DIMMOCK: He’ll put things right. I’ll bet in a day or two you’re not seeing things.

SAM: I like seeing things.

DIMMOCK: But you know what can happen to people who see things other people don’t see?

SAM: Yes – they’re in the National Gallery.

DIMMOCK: I mean chaps who begin to think it’s the thirty-first of June – you had me guessing there, for a minute, Sam – and chaps who start asking about red and yellow dwarfs in tights.

GRUMET the dwarf, who is dressed in red and yellow doublet and hose now enters quietly, not by the door but through the cupboard. DIMMOCK continues, without seeing him
.

Even while your own commonsense tells you we don’t have red and yellow dwarfs here – wouldn’t know what to do with one if we had one – that it stands to reason that it’s nothing but your imagination –

SAM:
(Checking him.)
Pst!
(He indicates GRUMET, who is now capering, grinning and pointing at Sam.)

DIMMOCK:
(Thunderstruck.) Hell’s Bells
!

(Shouting to GRUMET.)
Here – you!

GRUMET, with a last mischievous flourish at SAM, grabs the picture and stockings, runs with them and dives clean through the cupboard and vanishes
.

SAM:
(Angrily.)
He’s taken my Damosel portrait! Hoy-hoy!

DIMMOCK:
(Moving, shouting.)
Stop him – stop him!

They fling wide the cupboard doors but now it appears solidly filled with large books, files etc. with of course no trace of GRUMET. DIMMOCK looks at SAM with dismay
.

DIMMOCK: He couldn’t have gone through there.

SAM: He could. He did. And I think he came in through this cupboard.

DIMMOCK: Stop it, Sam. You’ve got me going now.

Enter PHILIP and ANNE
.

SAM: I’m now quitting these premises and don’t propose to return today, which I’m still convinced is the thirty-first of June.

DIMMOCK: What – you’re going home, Sam?

SAM:
(Firmly.)
I am going to my local – The Black Horse in Peacock Place – which should be opening about the time I arrive there.
(Moves towards door, then turns.)
And if I were you three, I’d pack up all pretence of work.
It’s the wrong day. (Goes out.)

ANNE: D.D. – you oughtn’t to have let him go before we decided about the Damosel thing. Where’s his picture?
(Looking round urgently.)
Look – D.D. – he must have taken it.

DIMMOCK: No, he didn’t.

ANNE:
(Urgently.)
But – D.D. – it’s not here.
Somebody
must have taken it.

PHIL:
(Grinning.)
Perhaps a red-and-yellow dwarf.

DIMMOCK:
(Into intercom.)
Peggy, bring me two aspirins and a glass of water.

ANNE:
(Severely.)
Stop clowning, Phil – this is business now. D.D. –
did
somebody take it?

DIMMOCK:
(Heavily and slowly.)
Yes. A red-and-yellow dwarf. He dived into the cupboard with it –

ANNE:
(Smiling reproachfully.)
Now – D.D. –

DIMMOCK:
(In a sudden fury, very loud.)
I tell you – a red and yellow dwarf came and ran away with it –

The pneumatic drill starts and DIMMOCK, trying vainly to shout above it, in his rage flings papers in the air and batters the top of his desk. Rapid fade out of both sound and sight. We hear the sound of the lute. Light picks up the lute-player, then we fade in the room in the Castle, as in Scene One
.

Castle, as Scene One. LAMISON playing to MELICENT and NINETTE, who look very bored. LAMISON finishes his performance, gets up and bows
.

MELICENT: Thank you, Lamison. Very nice – but we’re just not in the mood. So you may go.

NINETTE: And try to learn
The Black Knight Hath My Heart
.

Lamison goes out R., obviously saying rude things about Ninette under his breath
.

MELICENT:
(Peevishly.)
Who wants a black knight anyhow? Or any other colour, for that matter? I think knights are so
boring
. All that idiotic clattering and clashing and banging! All that buckling and unbuckling!

NINETTE: I ruined my nails helping to unbuckle Sir Maris, that day at the Astolat Tournament. And then he talked about nothing but heraldry for hours and hours until I could have screamed. What I’d like is an enchanter –

MELICENT: It’s what we all want, Ninette dear.

NINETTE: No, I mean a professional, a properly qualified magician –

MELICENT: They’re always so
old
.

NINETTE: A really clever one, if you insisted, could make himself appear any age you fancied.

MELICENT: Yes, but I’d still feel really he was old – and a bit smelly –

NINETTE: All you’re thinking about is your Sam –

MELICENT: I know. And I keep telling myself not to. Yesterday was wonderful – but today – what is there?

NINETTE: We ought to
make
things happen.

MALGRIM:
(Appearing suddenly from behind pillar.)
With my assistance, I hope, ladies. At your service, most noble princess.

MELICENT: Master Malgrim – you’re not supposed to make sudden appearances like that. It’s not allowed. Ninette – this is Master Malgrim, the new sorcerer who came from King Mark. Lady Ninette.
(He bows and she smiles.)

NINETTE: Master Malgrim, how did you do it?

He is a distinguished-looking, rather Mephistophelean oldish man with a grey moustache and imperial, magnificently gowned in the sorcerer style. His presence, voice, gestures are all in the grand manner
.

MALGRIM:
(With affable condescension.)
I was invisible of course. A quick simple method most of us use now. Only very old-fashioned magicians and enchanters, these days, prefer to transform themselves. For example, my uncle, who insisted upon coming along, decided to enter the castle and make his way up here as a brown rat. Not here yet, I suppose? No? That proves my point – a risky, clumsy, slow method.