Complete Works, Volume IV by Harold Pinter Read Free Book Online Page B

house.
    SPOONER We?
    HIRST I.
    SPOONER Is there another?
    HIRST Another what?
    SPOONER People. Person.
    HIRST What other?
    SPOONER There are two mugs on that shelf.
    HIRST The second is for you.
    SPOONER And the first?
    HIRST Would you like to use it? Would you like some hot refreshment?
    SPOONER That would be dangerous. I’ll stick to your scotch, if I may.
    HIRST Help yourself.
    SPOONER Thank you.
    He goes to cabinet.
    HIRST I’ll take a whisky with you, if you would be so kind.
    SPOONER With pleasure. Weren’t you drinking vodka?
    HIRST I’ll be happy to join you in a whisky.
    Spooner pours.
    SPOONER You’ll take it as it is, as it comes?
    HIRST Oh, absolutely as it comes.
    Spooner brings Hirst his glass.
    SPOONER Your very good health.
    HIRST Yours.
    They drink.
    Tell me . . . do you often hang about Jack Straw’s Castle?
    SPOONER I knew it as a boy.
    HIRST Do you find it as beguiling a public house now as it was in the days of the highwaymen, when it was frequented by highwaymen? Notably Jack Straw. The great Jack Straw. Do you find it much changed?
    SPOONER It changed my life.
    HIRST Good Lord. Did it really?
    SPOONER I refer to a midsummer night, when I shared a drink with a Hungarian émigré, lately retired from Paris.
    HIRST The same drink?
    SPOONER By no means. You’ve guessed, I would imagine, that he was an erstwhile member of the Hungarian aristocracy?
    HIRST I did guess, yes.
    SPOONER On that summer evening, led by him, I first appreciated how quiet life can be, in the midst of yahoos and hullabaloos. He exerted on me a quite uniquely . . . calming influence, without exertion, without any . . . desire to influence. He was so much older than me. My expectations in those days, and I confess I had expectations in those days, did not include him in their frame of reference. I’d meandered over to Hampstead Heath, a captive to memories of a more than usually pronounced grisliness, and found myself, not much to my surprise, ordering a pint at the bar of Jack Straw’s Castle. This achieved, and having negotiated a path through a particularly repellent lick-spittling herd of literati, I stumbled, unseeing, with my pint, to his bald, tanned, unmoving table. How bald he was.
    Pause.
    I think, after quite half my pint had descended, never to be savoured again, that I spoke, suddenly, suddenly spoke, and received . . . a response, no other word will do, a response, the like of which—
    HIRST What was he drinking?
    SPOONER What?
    HIRST What was he drinking?
    SPOONER Pernod.
    Pause.
    I was impressed, more or less at that point, by an intuition that he possessed a measure of serenity the like of which I had never encountered.
    HIRST What did he say?
    Spooner stares at him.
    SPOONER You expect me to remember what he said?
    HIRST No.
    Pause.
    SPOONER What he said . . . all those years ago . . . is neither here nor there. It was not what he said but possibly the way he sat which has remained with me all my life and has, I am quite sure, made me what I am.
    Pause.
    And I met you at the same pub tonight, although at a different table.
    Pause.
    And I wonder at you, now, as once I wondered at him. But will I wonder at you tomorrow, I wonder, as I still wonder at him today?
    HIRST I cannot say.
    SPOONER It cannot be said.
    Pause.
    I’ll ask you another question. Have you any idea from what I derive my strength?
    HIRST Strength? No.
    SPOONER I have never been loved. From this I derive my strength. Have you? Ever? Been loved?
    HIRST Oh, I don’t suppose so.
    SPOONER I looked up once into my mother’s face. What I saw there was nothing less than pure malevolence. I was fortunate to escape with my life. You will want to know what I had done to provoke such hatred in my own mother.
    HIRST You’d pissed yourself.
    SPOONER Quite right. How old do you think I was at the time?
    HIRST Twenty-eight.
    SPOONER Quite right. However, I left home soon after.
    Pause.
    My mother remains, I