Remembrance and Pantomime (13 page)

     Right! A beer for you and a beer for me! Now, what else is it going to be? A sandwich for you, but none for me.

(
HARRY
picks up the paperback and opens it, removing a folded sheet of paper. He opens it and is reading it carefully, sometimes lifting his head, closing his eyes, as if remembering its contents, then reading again. He puts it into a pocket quickly as
JACKSON
returns, carrying a tray with two beers, a bottle of Scotch, a pitcher of water, and two glasses.
JACKSON
sets them down on the table
)

     I’m here, sir. At your command.

HARRY

     Sit down. Forget the sandwiches, I don’t want to eat. Let’s sit down, man to man, and have a drink. That was the most sarcastic hammering I’ve ever heard, and I know you were trying to get back at me with all those noises and that Uncle Tom crap. So let’s have a drink, man to man, and try and work out what happened this morning, all right?

JACKSON

     I’ve forgotten about this morning, sir.

HARRY

     No, no, no, I mean, the rest of the day it’s going to bother me, you know?

JACKSON

     Well, I’m leaving at half-past one.

HARRY

     No, but still … Let’s … Okay. Scotch?

JACKSON

     I’ll stick to beer, sir, thank you.

(
HARRY
pours a Scotch and water,
JACKSON
serves himself a beer. Both are still standing
)

HARRY

     Sit over there, please, Mr. Phillip. On the deck chair.

(
JACKSON
sits on the deck chair, facing
HARRY
)

     Cheers?

JACKSON

     Cheers. Cheers. Deck chair and all.

(
They toast and drink
)

HARRY

     All right. Look, I think you misunderstood me this morning.

JACKSON

     Why don’t we forget the whole thing, sir? Let me finish this beer and go for my sea bath, and you can spend the rest of the day all by yourself.

(
Pause
)

     Well. What’s wrong? What happen, sir? I said something wrong just now?

HARRY

     This place isn’t going to drive me crazy, Jackson. Not if I have to go mad preventing it. Not physically crazy; but you just start to think crazy thoughts, you know? At the beginning it’s fine; there’s the sea, the palm trees, monarch of all I survey and so on, all that postcard stuff. And then it just becomes another back yard. God, is there anything deadlier than Sunday afternoons in the tropics when you can’t sleep? The horror and stillness of the heat, the shining, godforsaken sea, the bored and boring clouds? Especially in an empty boarding house. You sit by the stagnant pool counting the dead leaves drifting to the edge. I daresay the terror of emptiness made me want to act. I wasn’t trying to humiliate you. I meant nothing by it. Now, I don’t usually apologize to people. I don’t do things to apologize for. When I do them, I mean them, but, in your case, I’d like to apologize.

JACKSON

     Well, if you find here boring, go back home. Do something else, nuh?

HARRY

     It’s not that simple. It’s a little more complicated than that. I mean, everything I own is sunk here, you see? There’s a little matter of a brilliant actress who drank too much, and a car crash at Brighton after a panto … Well. That’s neither here nor there now. Right? But I’m determined to make this place work. I gave up the theater for it.

JACKSON

     Why?

HARRY

     Why? I wanted to be the best. Well, among other things; oh, well, that’s neither here nor there. Flopped at too many things, though. Including classical and Creole acting. I just want to make this place work, you know. And a desperate man’ll try anything. Even at the cost of his sanity, maybe. I mean, I’d hate to believe that under everything else I was also prejudiced, as well. I wouldn’t have any right here, right?

JACKSON

     ’Tain’t prejudice that bothering you, Mr. Trewe; you ain’t no parrot to repeat opinion. No, is loneliness that sucking your soul as dry as the sun suck a crab shell. On a Sunday like this, I does watch you. The whole staff does study you. Walking round restless, staring at the sea. You remembering your wife and your son, not right? You ain’t get over that yet?

HARRY

     Jackson …

JACKSON

     Is none of my business. But it really lonely here out of season. Is summer, and your own people gone, but come winter they go flock like sandpipers all down that beach. So you lonely, but I could make you forget all o’ that. I could make H. Trewe, Esquire, a brand-new man. You come like a challenge.

HARRY

     Think I keep to myself too much?

JACKSON

     If! You would get your hair cut by phone. You drive so careful you make your car nervous. If you was in charge of the British Empire, you wouldn’ta lose it, you’da misplace it.

HARRY

     I see, Jackson.

JACKSON

     But all that could change if you do what I tell you.

HARRY

     I don’t want a new life, thanks.

JACKSON

     Same life. Different man. But that stiff upper lip goin’ have to quiver a little.

HARRY

     What’s all this? Obeah? “That old black magic”?

JACKSON

     Nothing. I could have the next beer?

HARRY

     Go ahead. I’m drinking Scotch.

(
JACKSON
takes the other beer, swallows deep, smacks his lips, grins at
HARRY
)

JACKSON

     Nothing. We will have to continue from where we stop this morning. You will have to be Thursday.

HARRY

     Aha, you bastard! It’s a thrill giving orders, hey? But I’m not going through all that rubbish again.

JACKSON

     All right. Stay as you want. But if you say yes, it go have to be man to man, and none of this boss-and-Jackson business, you see, Trewe … I mean, I just call you plain Trewe, for example, and I notice that give you a slight shock. Just a little twitch of the lip, but a shock all the same, eh, Trewe? You see? You twitch again. It would be just me and you, all right? You see, two of we both acting a role here we ain’t really really believe in, you know. I ent think you strong enough to give people orders, and I
know
I ain’t the kind who like taking
them.
So both of we doesn’t have to
improvise
so much as
exaggerate.
We faking, faking all the time. But, man to man, I mean …

(
Pause
)

     that could be something else. Right, Mr. Trewe?

HARRY

     Aren’t we man to man now?

JACKSON

     No, no. We having one of them “playing man-to-man” talks, where a feller does look a next feller in the eye and say, “Le’ we settle this thing, man to man,” and this time the feller who smiling and saying it, his whole honest intention is to take that feller by the crotch and rip out he stones, and dig out he eye and leave him for corbeaux to pick.

(
Silence
)

HARRY

     You know, that thing this morning had an effect on me, man to man now. I didn’t think so much about the comedy of
Robinson Crusoe,
I thought what we were getting into was a little sad. So, when I went back to the room, I tried to rest before lunch, before you began all that vindictive hammering …

JACKSON

     Vindictive?

HARRY

     Man to man: that vindictive hammering and singing, and I thought, Well, maybe we could do it straight. Make a real straight thing out of it.

JACKSON

     You mean like a tradegy. With one joke?

HARRY

     Or a codemy, with none. You mispronounce words on purpose, don’t you, Jackson?

(
JACKSON
smiles
)

     Don’t think for one second that I’m not up on your game, Jackson. You’re playing the stage nigger with me. I’m an actor, you know. It’s a smile in front and a dagger behind your back, right? Or the smile itself is the bloody dagger. I’m aware, chum. I’m aware.

JACKSON

     The smile kinda rusty, sir, but it goes with the job. Just like the water in this hotel:

(
Demonstrates
)

     I turn it on at seven and lock it off at one.

HARRY

     Didn’t hire you for the smile; I hired you for your voice. We’ve the same background. Old-time calypso, old-fashioned music hall:

(
Sings
)

     
Oh, me wife can’t cook and she looks like a horse

     
And the way she makes coffee is grounds for divorce …

(
Does a few steps
)

     
But when love is at stake she’s my Worcester sauce …

(
Stops
)

     Used to wow them with that. All me own work. Ah, the lost glories of the old music hall, the old provincials, grimy brocade, the old stars faded one by one. The brassy pantomimes! Come from an old music-hall family, you know, Jackson. Me mum had this place she ran for broken-down actors. Had tea with the greats as a tot.

(
Sings softly, hums
)

     
Oh, me wife can’t cook …

(
Silence
)

     You married, Jackson?

JACKSON

     I not too sure, sir.

HARRY

     You’re not sure?

JACKSON

     That’s what I said.

HARRY

     I know what you mean. I wasn’t sure I was when I was. My wife’s remarried.

JACKSON

     You showed me her photo. And the little boy own.

HARRY

     But I’m not. Married. So there’s absolutely no hearth for Crusoe to go home to. While you were up there, I rehearsed this thing.

(
Presents a folded piece of paper
)

     Want to read it?

JACKSON

     What … er … what is it … a poetry?

HARRY

     No, no, not a poetry. A thing I wrote. Just a speech in the play … that if …

JACKSON

     Oho, we back in the play again?

HARRY

     Almost. You want to read it?

(
He offers the paper
)

JACKSON

     All right.

HARRY

     I thought—no offense, now. Man to man. If you were doing Robinson Crusoe, this is what you’d read.

JACKSON

     You want me to read this, right?

HARRY

     Yeah.

JACKSON

(
Reads slowly
)

     “O silent sea, O wondrous sunset that I’ve gazed on ten thousand times, who will rescue me from this complete desolation?…”

(
Breaking
)

     All o’ this?

HARRY

     If you don’t mind. Don’t act it. Just read it.

(
JACKSON
looks at him
)

     No offense.

JACKSON

(
Reads
)

     “Yes, this is paradise, I know. For I see around me the splendors of nature…”

HARRY

     Don’t act it …

JACKSON

(
Pauses; then continues
)

     “How I’d like to fuflee this desolate rock.”

(
Pauses
)

     Fuflee? Pardon, but what is a fuflee, Mr. Trewe?

HARRY

     A fuflee? I’ve got “fuflee” written there?

JACKSON

(
Extends paper, points at word
)

     So, how you does fuflee, Mr. Harry? Is Anglo-Saxon English?

(
HARRY
kneels down and peers at the word. He rises
)

HARRY

     It’s F … then F-L-E-E—flee to express his hesitation. It’s my own note as an actor. He quivers, he hesitates …

JACKSON

     He quivers, he hesitates, but he still can’t fuflee?

HARRY

     Just leave that line out, Jackson.

JACKSON

     I like it.

HARRY

     
Leave it out!

JACKSON

     No fuflee?

HARRY

     I said no.

JACKSON

     Just because I read it wrong. I know the word “flee,” you know. Like to take off. Flee. Faster than run. Is the extra
F
you put in there so close to flee that had me saying fuflee like a damn ass, but le’ we leave it in, nuh? One fuflee ain’t go kill anybody. Much less bite them.

(
Silence
)

     Get it?

HARRY

     Don’t take this personally …

JACKSON

     No fuflees on old Crusoe, boy …

HARRY

     But, if you’re going to do professional theater, Jackson, don’t take this personally, more discipline is required. All right?

JACKSON

     You write it. Why you don’t read it?

HARRY

     I wanted to hear it. Okay, give it back …

JACKSON

(
Loudly, defiantly
)