Rock 'n' Roll (15 page)

NIGEL
I owned a kaftan. Photographs exist.

LENKA
Jan had all his hair.

JAN
I did. We all had hair. It was our right.

NIGEL
When I met Esme, she was living in Clarendon Street in a—would you call it a squat or a commune? Esme?

ESME
Yes …

NIGEL
I infiltrated to do a story, but—sadly—I went native.

ALICE
Not sadly. You fell in love with Mum.

CANDIDA
Well said.

MAX
The fifties was the last time liberty opened up as you left your youth behind you. After that, young people started off with more liberty than they knew what to do with … but—regrettably—confused it with sexual liberation and the freedom to get high … so it all went to waste.

NIGEL
Right on. Sex, drugs and Rock ‘n' Roll.

LENKA
(
protests loudly
) Excuse me, we changed the world.

CANDIDA
Yes—what about 1968?

MAX
What happened in 1968?

CANDIDA
Revolution!

MAX
You'll have to help me. I've got that disease where you can't remember its name.

LENKA
Candida means the cultural revolution.

CANDIDA
No, I don't, I mean the occupations—Paris, the LSE, or in my case, Hornsey College of Art.

MAX
Oh, the occupations, yes. Do you remember the occupation of ‘68, Jan?

ALICE
Grandpa.

MAX
What?

ALICE
You know what.

CANDIDA
(
smiles at Alice
) Max knows damn well what I'm talking about, and we were all high on bringing down capitalism.

NIGEL
Bringing down capitalism was Candida's youthful indiscretion.

MAX
Street theatre.

CANDIDA
And ending war. All war, not just Vietnam. I don't know what you mean about the dressing up. I wore a camouflage jacket and combat boots. Oh, I see what you mean. But I also had a Sergeant Pepper coat from Chelsea Girl. No, okay, so we dressed up. So what? We were very political. My boyfriend was a
Black Dwarf
cartoonist.

Jan is taken aback. Lenka explains.

LENKA
Newspaper.

MAX
But Lenka is right. It turned out to be merely a cultural revolution. It left the system in place … because, as I could have told you at the time, altering the psyche has no effect on the social structure. You drop out or you fit in. In the end, you fitted in. (
to Esme
) Shove the bottle along.

CANDIDA
(
laughs
) And there's me thinking I'm famous for skewering the high and the mighty.

MAX
(
to Esme
) Bottle.

Stephen pushes a wine bottle past Esme to Max.

ESME
What? Yes. Who wants more (coffee) …?

Esme gets up, taking the coffee pot.

ALICE
(
anxious about her
) Should I …?

LENKA
Don't try to put me on your side, Max. ‘Make love, not war' was more important than ‘Workers of the world unite'.

JAN
I agree with Lenka.

Esme glances at Jan and Lenka, and leaves with the coffee pot. Alice follows Esme out, concerned for her.

ALICE
What are you doing, Mum? I've already filled it.

LENKA
(
meanwhile
) Actually, who
owns
the factories doesn't change anything at all.

STEPHEN
(
amused
) Did you get that, Max?

CANDIDA
(
scratching the itch
) What do you mean, I fitted in?

NIGEL
Yes, we're the fourth estate, thank you very much. Good men went to prison to establish the public's right to know.

MAX
They did, and personally I'd be keeping quiet about them if I were filling half the paper with salacious drivel about celebrities I've never heard of.

STEPHEN
Actually they would have loved it.

MAX
The proletariat wouldn't follow where Stephen led, so he follows where the proletariat lead.

Alice returns with the coffee pot. She silently offers coffee to Candida and gets a smile.

MAX
(
cont.) (meanwhile, to Candida
) I'll tell you, then. Everything you write is hostage to the market. Your proprietor is in thrall to the consumer. While profits rise, he will reward you for telling lies; while profits fall, he will punish you for telling truth—

NIGEL
(
explodes
) This is bullshit, Max!

Alice continues her round with the coffee.

MAX
(
to Candida
) Try skewering your advertisers.

CANDIDA
(
cool
) As it happens, my contract says not a word of my column can be changed except for libel.

MAX
Your contract serves no purpose. Why would you jeopardise your privileges?

ALICE
Grandpa.

MAX
(
deliberately mistaking
) No, thank you.

ALICE
You've upset Mum.

MAX
How?

ALICE
How?!

She puts down the coffee pot and moves to exit.

ALICE
(
cont.
) She's gone upstairs anyway. I think she's sickening for something.

JAN
(
to Alice
) Is she (all right) …?

Alice leaves.

NIGEL
(
pointing to Jan
) Yes—ask
him!

MAX
Ask him what?

NIGEL
Ask him to tell you about truth and lies in your beloved system.

MAX
I don't need Jan to tell me. Systems don't set out to undermine themselves. Newspapers are part of the system, and truth is relative to that simple fact.

NIGEL
(
triumphantly
) Thank you!

MAX
I was talking about your lot.

NIGEL
(
pressing the point
) Tell him what you said to me in Prague.

JAN
What was that?

NIGEL
Shit, I don't know—you were there. About having lots of different truths being human.

JAN
No, I said it was human to disagree about the truth.

NIGEL
Exactly. That's our system.

JAN
But Max is right. How did the propaganda paper and the capitalist press arrive at the same relation to the truth? Because all systems are blood brothers. Changing one system for another is not what the Velvet Revolution was for. We have to begin again with the ordinary meaning of words. Giving new meanings to words is how systems lie to themselves, beginning with the word for themselves—socialism, democracy … An invasion becomes fraternal assistance, and a parasite can be someone who is punished by unemployment and punished again for being unemployed—isn't that so, Max?

MAX
I would have let you stew if Esme had given me any peace.

LENKA
Lies didn't start with language …

JAN
(
to Max
) What do you mean? Esme …?

LENKA
The first lie was man turning away from his nature.

CANDIDA
What about us girls?

STEPHEN
Actually, Candida, did you read your Bonkers Barrett story today?

CANDIDA
Mine?

LENKA
I read it.

NIGEL
I suppose you're going to say it's not true.

STEPHEN
Nothing so simple. What it is, is an unrebuttable lie. To anyone who knows, it's an overheated nonsense, apparently written for people with arrested development, and mindlessly cruel, but totally safe, a sort of triumph, really. But the oddest thing about it is that the cruelty and the dishonesty are completely unmotivated, it's just a … a kind of
style.
Lenka, why do you buy it?

LENKA
It's got the best horoscope.

MAX
(
to Stephen
) Newspapers are human nature in print, and human nature being what it is, full of cruelty and
superstition,
Lenka—

NIGEL
(
getting up
) Okay, everybody, thanks very much—

MAX
—I prefer a
system
where the papers are too boring to do much harm.

NIGEL
Come on, Candida.

Nigel goes out to get her coat.

CANDIDA
I must say goodbye to Alice.

LENKA
You think human nature is a beast which must be put in a cage. But it's the cage that makes the animal bad.

NIGEL
(
returning with Candida's coat
) Goodbye, all.

MAX
The cage is reason.

LENKA
Reason is
your
superstition. Nature is deeper than reason, and stranger.

MAX
Is this going to be about the I Ching?

Lenka grabs a table knife and advances the length of the table on Max.

NIGEL
We only came to see Alice. We'll leave you to it.

Alice enters with a newspaper.

ALICE
Is this your paper, Candida?

LENKA
(
stopped
) I think it's mine.

Alice beats the paper to tatters on Candida's shoulders. Nigel pulls Alice away. Alice breaks free and leaves in tears. Stephen follows her. Candida is in shock. Nigel puts his arm round her.

NIGEL
You're all insane!

He takes Candida out, with a parting shot at Max.

NIGEL
(
cont.
) I'll tell you your problem—you've been wrong all your life and now you know it. Come on, darling.

Max, Lenka and Jan gaze at the exeunt. Voices outside, the front door slamming.

MAX
(
pause
) And it was all going so well.

Max reaches for Lenka's hand, removes the knife, puts her hand to his lips.

MAX
(
cont.
) It's good to have you back. I was getting boring.

Lenka kisses Max's head.

MAX
(
cont.
) I asked Lenka to stay.

JAN
Oh. Good. To stay?

MAX
One day at a time, you know.

LENKA
It's upset Esme.

MAX
She doesn't know.

LENKA
You didn't ask her?

MAX
Why? It's my house.

She hits him playfully.

LENKA
What's upset her, then?

JAN
I don't want to go without …

Max drains his wine glass, his mood lowered.

MAX
There was a place once, a huge country where square-jawed workers swung sledgehammers, and smiling buxom girls with kerchiefs on their heads lifted sheaves of wheat, and there was a lot of singing, and volumes of poetry in editions of a hundred thousand sold out in a day … What happened to it?

JAN
If pornography was available, the poetry would have sold like poetry in the West. We don't yet understand what we've done.

MAX
(
grins) I
do.

JAN
Tell Esme thank you.

MAX
Come back and finish your doctorate.

JAN
When my mother died I thought of it. Emigration, even.

MAX
Jan loves England.

JAN
(
laughs
) I do!