Chapter 10

[Frankiecomes in.

Gwen(surprised): Hullo, Frankie! ... you know Margaret.

Frankie: Of course.

Margaret: Good evening.

Frankie: I thought I’d go to bed, and then I thought I wouldn’t. I should just lie and think; and I heard you come up.

[The other two have nothing to say. She goes on; toMargaret:

Do you know what’s happened to-night?

Margaret: Vaguely.

Frankie: Did you know this girl?

Margaret: Vaguely.

Frankie: Everybody seems to think it’s my fault!

Gwen: Frankie! I didn’t say....

Frankie: Yes you did. So did John.

[Again a silence; again she continues:

I’ve been crying; I’ve got that over, now I’ve got used to the idea. John says he doesn’t love me.

[Again they have nothing to say; but she encourages them.

You can say what you like; I shan’t cry again.

Gwen(gently): He did: I don’t think he does now.

Frankie(unexpectedly defiant): Well, I’m quite sure I don’t love him! I was sobbing away upstairs, but I found it was for the drawing-room curtains I’m not going to buy; not for him. Of course, I’m angry and hurt at being deceived. And I don’t see why I shouldn’t be!... But you can say what you like.

Gwen(suddenly): Margaret!

Margaret: Yes?

Gwen: If I ask you some questions—things that’ll help me if I know—will you answer them?

Margaret: If I can.

Gwen: You’re not married?

Margaret: No.

Gwen: Have you ever let anybody love you? You know what I mean. Words are difficult—I don’t want to be frightened by them.... Have you?

Margaret: Yes.

Gwen: Just one man, or more than one?

Margaret: More than one.

Gwen: Tell me about it, withallof them, please!

[A little smile breaks onMargaret’slips, and the tiniest laugh. Perhaps the audience laughs louder; so much the better, forGwenanswers——

Gwen: Don’t laugh, please. I don’t mean it to be anything to laugh at. I ask because I want to know. Not about you, but about love. I’m ashamed to be as old as I am, and not know—You have knowledge, and I haven’t.... So will you tell me, please?

Margaret: Ask away.

Gwen: When you didn’t know anything at all, how did it first happen?

[A pause. Then:

Margaret(beginning slowly in recollection): A man I was doing some work for asked me to join a walking party in the Lakes. We started all together. Half-way through, he and I branched off to walk across a passand meet the others on the other side. I don’t know whether he meant to meet them. I meant to. But we didn’t.

Gwen: What sort of a man was he?

Margaret: An enthusiast about freedom.

Gwen: How old?

Margaret: About thirty. We walked among mountains and talked a great deal, and when it was getting dark, we reached an inn. And there we had dinner, and there we stopped.

Gwen: Did you love him very much?

Margaret: No. I was curious.

Gwen: Yes.

Margaret: It’s queer. We hadn’t got love, which nowadays seems to me the only justification—yet I’ve never had any regrets.

Frankie: Haven’t you?

Margaret: We were full of air and sky, and ideas for making the world better; probably very silly, but quite genuine. And he was very gentle and understanding.

Frankie: What happened when youdidmeet the others?

Margaret: We didn’t. We walked in the other direction for a week. Then we came back to London.

Frankie: And then?

Margaret: Then he fell in love with another girl. I daresay he taught her what he taught me. That seems to be his mission in life!

Frankie(indignant): That’s what always happens—weren’t you furious and ashamed?

Margaret: I was awfully pleased with myself! I was living in a boarding-house in Bloomsbury. I couldn’t afford a room of my own, or to go out in the evenings. I used to have to sit in the drawing-room with a lot of old spinster ladies, knitting and playing patience and talking scandal. Before the Lakes, I used to think I should go mad, sometimes; but afterwards, when I looked round at them all, there was a sort of triumphant glee in me. I used to say to myself, “I know more about life than you do. Poor old things!”

Gwen: That must have been topping.

Margaret: It was rather.

Gwen: ... Who was the next?

Margaret: I fell in love; so it’s not easy to talk about. I lived with him. For three years. The best time of my life. That’s all.

Gwen: D’you mind my asking?

Margaret: Of course not. Most people like talking about themselves.

Gwen: Why didn’t you marry?

Margaret(painfully): We meant to get married ... when we could afford children. And then I ended it.

Frankie: You?

Gwen: How?

Margaret: At least it was my fault. My man was away; and a boy fell in love with me; it was in the middle of the war when it seemed it would go on for ever. Wemet at a friend’s house; he was in khaki; at a house party. And then he came to have tea with me at my flat.

Gwen: Were you in love withhim?

Margaret: I couldn’t have married him. But he was very strong, and good-looking ... and going back to the front. They knew what they were going back to, and they laughed. He was the first man younger than I was who told me that he loved me; and on his last night in England, as if he was my child, I wanted to give him everything he asked for. And he asked for me and—I was glad.

Gwen: I’m glad you were. Did he stop at your flat?

Margaret: We went to an hotel. We had dinner in the West End. Across the little table—with a shaded light on it—I kept catching him looking at me.... One evening when nothing mattered but our happiness. Then he went back to France, and I went home and told my man—and my life smashed.

Gwen: Didn’t he understand?

Margaret: Oh yes, he understood. We went to the Queen’s Hall the night I told him, and when we got home talked till five in the morning; it didn’t smash all at once—it just made a difference.

Gwen: I don’t understand.

Margaret: Nor do I—altogether.Hehad an affair soon afterwards. You see, he’d given up everything of that sort for me, and I didn’t ... so he didn’t ... it broke up our life together. Freedom’s a devastating thing ... a few hours I shall never forget, and a year of hell afterwards, and I’ve never really made up mymind whether I’m glad or sorry.... (ToFrankie) Do you disapprove of me very much?

Frankie: Disapprove? No. But I don’t think it’s right.

Gwen(a quick challenge): What’s right?

Frankie: When I marry I shall have kept myself for him, whoever he is. And I hope he will, too.

Margaret: Oh, my dear!

Gwen(alert): Why did you say “Oh, my dear” like that?

Margaret: Another young man fell in love with me. (She turns toFrankiewith a smile.) I’m sorry! I know it soundsdreadfulsaying them one after the other, quickly, like this! But there was a year of being lonely—desperately lonely. And it hurt the young man, too; so I let him take me away.

[A pause.

Gwen: ... Well?

Margaret(toFrankie): He was one of your ideal young men.

Frankie: Yes?

Margaret: And not only innocent; ignorant. He knew his own needs, vaguely; not mine, at all. I suffered from his ignorance.... But he taught me something.

Gwen: What?

Margaret: Why so many married women go on regarding love-making as horrid.

Gwen: Why?

Margaret: They’re married to men who don’t know how to make love. You see, without gentleness and sensitiveness and consideration—and much that comes from knowledge, what ought to be complete harmony can be very disharmonious, what ought to be utterly satisfying to body and soul can be utterly nerve-racking and unsatisfactory.... Somebody said that a man who can’t make love is like an Orang-Utang playing the fiddle.... It wants learning—the fiddle.

Frankie: It seems so horrid to make that part of it so important.

Margaret: I daresay it’s not so important if it’s right. It’s all-important if it’s wrong.

Gwen: How?

Margaret: If you can’t make love beautiful for your man, sooner or later, he’ll go to someone who can; or he’ll want to, which is as bad.

Frankie: Are you happy?

Margaret: I suppose not, really.

Frankie: What do you want?

Margaret: A man of my own, and children.

Frankie: Doesn’t that prove your way’s wrong?

Margaret: I’m not saying it’s right or wrong. Gwen asked me. I’ve told you.

Gwen: Thank you.

[ColinandJohncome in.

Come in and sit down.

Margaret: If she asks any questions, don’t you answer!

Colin: What sort of questions?

Margaret: Don’t ask me.

Gwen: I wish somebody’d tell me what love is.

John(sotto voce, getting out of his wet coat, disappearing into his bedroom with it): A damned nuisance.

Colin:I’lltell you.

Gwen(eagerly): I should like to know whatyouthink.

[Thus challenged,Colincollects himself; he joins the group round the fire.

Colin: As one gets older, and loses one’s illusions——

Margaret: They’re off.

Colin: And realises half one’s life has gone, and there’s an end to it some day, one is apt to get lonely. A lost atom in an infinity of blackness. In that blackness is despair. Only one thing can dispel it—Love. Real love. None of your free sort, John!

Gwen: What d’you mean?

Colin: I mean that love between two people that doesn’t need anything else, that won’t tolerate anything else, that’s lasting and tyrannical and jealous, is the only kind that’s worth while.

John(reappearing): What he really means is, he’s getting middle-aged.

Colin: Real love isn’t free.

John: Now listen, Grandpa; you’re nearly forty.

Colin: Shut up.

John: You’ve been at it twenty years. Have you ever had an experience which might be called free?

Colin: Don’t be silly.

John: You’ve passed the years of adventure, and you want to settle down. So you say: “Ah, I’m wise and sane and right, and all you poor young people are wrong.”

Frankie(very much atJohn): Do you think you know all about it because you’re wrong?

John: We couldn’t very well make a worse mess than they have, could we?

Frankie: I’m not so sure.

John: Oh, Frankie! If we sat down with a pencil and paper and tried to work out a really unclean, intolerant, silly system, we couldn’t work out a worse one than exists to-day. Do you realise that?

Frankie: No, I don’t.

John: I could make you.

Gwen: Try—go on.

John: Well—to start with ... the obvious things. (He talks without difficulty, speaking what he has thought about.) Hundreds of thousands of girls on the streets; and an incredible amount of sex disease. One in every five infected! A million or so girls more than men doomed to a life without love. Some millions of separated people living without love and not allowed to marry again. Thousands of marriages where only distaste, and hate, remain. Ugliness, and cruelty, and intolerance about the whole subject that makes the sum of unnecessary suffering almost incredible. Does all that sound like a success? After all, we’re responsible to the next generation for the sort of world they’ll find. Have we any right to say, “Oh,that’s all right; we can’t do better than that. We needn’t bother”? Look at all the girls in the world, Frankie—one lot selling themselves to any man who can pay them; the rest brought up in a sort of prison of asceticism, as candidates for the privilege of becoming a man’s married housekeeper.

Colin: Oh, come, John! Nowadays there are a great many “betwixt and betweeners,” as it were!

John: The whole thing’s breaking up.

Colin: Then why bother?

John: The break-up is all so undirected and casual.

Margaret: Are you so sure it is breaking up?

John: Yes. Quite.

Gwen: Why?

John(definitely, and as the result of previous thought): The Church is losing its influence.

Colin: I shouldn’t have thought that mattered tuppence.

John: It’s fundamental.

Colin: How?

John: For hundreds of years the Church has had the most enormous influence by its hold over the lives of men and women in this way. Hasn’t it?

Colin: Yes.

John: Obviously its attitude towards the whole thing is fundamental.

Colin: Yes.

John: It regards sex as sin. It’s holy when the Church permits it in matrimony; and then it’s got to remain holy, for ever and ever Amen.

Gwen: As if it did.

John: They couldn’t stop people loving outside their rules; but they’ve made them ashamed of it. They’ve made sex a secret furtive thing. Well, anyhow, we’ve gotourchance now.

Margaret: Whynow, particularly?

John: The Church built the system, and as a binding force it’s no longer effective. Here’s your society—in a certain mould; but the power that did the moulding, that held it together, has gone. It’s vaguely keeping its shape, at present—but it’s crumbling. It must crumble; and it’ll have to be remodelled. That was going on, anyhow. Then the war came. Everything shaken to its foundations. Personal beliefs, institutions—everything. The world’s fluid. That’s why it’s all so damnably important now.

Frankie: If it’s all as bad as you say, surely if people lived as Religion tells them, all these terrible things wouldn’t happen?

John: That’s exactly what the Church says. “Society must be purified. Men and women must be taught not to sin.” But what they mean by purifying society is simply forcing it back under the old rules; what they mean by Sin is any infringement of those rules. What we say is: it’s the very narrowness of their rules that has made the mess, it’s the reverse side of their mistakenness ... “they make of their bodies a rampart for the protectionof respectable families”—that’s what Balzac says of prostitutes. “Sacrifices on the altar of monogamy”—Schopenhauer. Prostitution means disease. Youcan’tdo away with these things by the old rules. The old rules are thecauseof them. Practice proves it: the countries with easier divorce laws don’t have more promiscuity; less. Youmusttackle the business with new ideas—anyhow, it’s happening——

Gwen: What’s happening?

John: Compare the world of to-day and the Christian ideal of morality; a man must love one woman and one woman only; a woman must love one man and one man only;there must be no sex experience of any kind before or after marriage. That’s the ideal. And it’s tremendously important to realise it is the ideal; because either you agree with it and you’ve got to strive ruthlessly towards it, or you don’t agree with it, and you’ve got to find another.

Frankie: Are you so certain decent people don’t live according to it?

John: Yes.

Frankie: I’m not.

John: Take any average collection of people—take any ordinary audience at a theatre! How many men do you suppose have loved only their wives?

Colin: One or two, with luck.

John: How many women do you suppose have loved only their husbands?

Frankie: All of them. There may be just one or two who haven’t.

Margaret: You’re an optimist.

John: Anyhow, there are more of them every day; it’s a matter of mathematics.

Gwen: Whatdoyou mean?

John: Decent men don’t pick up girls off the streets. They love decent women. But if decent men love decent women—where are the decent women? All over the place.

Colin: If you had the rearranging of the world to-morrow what would youdo?

Margaret: I’m going home.

Gwen: Not for a minute. Go on, John. What would youdo?

Colin: A minute to recreate the world, John. Hurry up.

John: It comes down to a question of personal responsibility. When outside rules go, inside rules have got to take their places.

Gwen: Yes.

John: I mean, life was probably fairly simple to the early Victorian girl. She was brought up entirely without any sex in her life, waiting for a man to marry her. Anything else was so unthinkable that she didn’t think about it. The rules of her conduct were imposed from without. She had no decisions to make. So she didn’t worry. It’s different now.

Gwen: It is.

John: She’s got no respect for the outside rules; she’s got to find her inside ones. Sheisworrying. Whetheryou like it or not, she is. A great deal. Talking, thinking, deciding. Not always as her elders would like. But there are some fine people among ’em; they’ll do the devil of a lot to make a better world.

Gwen: I hope that’s true.

Margaret: They’re claiming a good deal more out of life.

John: Why shouldn’t they?

Gwen: Hear, hear!

Colin: You’re a dangerous influence, young man.

John: To you old men; I hope so; you’ve been damned dangerous to us!

Frankie: If Religion’s going to have nothing to do with your new world, what is?

John: You’re mixing up religion and the Church. There’s got to be a religious spirit; that’s essential; I mean the spirit that makes you strive to do the best with your life. I believe some young people to-day want to live according to their beliefs with a sincerity that’s religious—anyhow it’s causing nearly as much trouble.

Colin: A lot of conscientious consenters, that’s what you are.

Gwen: Now let’s bepersonal.

John: Go ahead.

Margaret: Must we!

Frankie:Youneedn’t talk.

Margaret: Needn’t! But I did.

Gwen: I know I’m sick of living at home; I know I’m sick of living alone. The obvious way out is to get married. But I don’t see how I can ever be certain of wanting to live all alone with the same person for the rest of my life.

Colin: When you’re in love, you’ll know all right.

John: That’s easy to say when you’re forty.

Colin: You’re being very unpleasant to me to-night.

John: I agree with Gwen. Nobody can know until they’ve tried.

Gwen: What d’you mean, “tried”?

Colin: Oh, my God, where’s a drink?

[He gets up to help himself to one.

John: Frankie, it’s been on the tip of my tongue during these last months to ask you where you wanted to go most in all the world: and then to ask you to come with me there, straight away.

Gwen: What fun! Would you have gone?

Frankie: Of course not.

Gwen: I don’t see why. A sort of trial affair.

John: No, Gwen. Much more respectable than that. Not a trial “affair.” A trial marriage. We should have gone definitely to find out whether we were suited for life.

Frankie: That would have been all very nice foryou!

John: You flatter yourself. It might have been nice for you, too!

Frankie: Supposing you’d taken me away and left me—where should I be then?

Colin(with his drink): That depends where you went to.

Gwen: Answer, John.

John: If we parted it would mean it wasn’t successful. It would be a very good thing for both of us that we weren’t tied up for life.

Frankie: Anyhow, you’d see a good deal of the world, John!

John: What do you mean?

Frankie: You’d always be going away with different people all over the place.

John: This is becoming too personal.

Frankie: You began it.

John: Somebody asked me to rearrange the world; and I’m doing it. I certainly wouldn’t sweep away all existing marriage laws all at once——

Colin: When are we coming to what youwoulddo?

John: I should go all out for a much larger tolerance; I should allow certain special relationships,withinthe present system, to be open and decent and honourable.

Frankie: Thereissomething else.

Gwen: What?

Frankie: ... It’s difficult to say.

Colin: Good heavens! Somebody’s found something they can’t say. It must be awful.

Gwen: Go on, Frankie.

Frankie: Well—if you go away with somebody—and it’s a failure, and you part, for the girl it’s not just as you were, is it?

John: No. I see what you mean ... it seems to me, chastity is a thing nobody has any right to inflict upon anybody else.

Gwen: Hear hear.

John: It may be fine when it’s undertaken from real personal belief, but it’s not worth tuppence when it’s meant a tremendous effort of starvation that achieves nothing but starvation.

Margaret: You know a lot of girls are quite tranquil and untouched by all this, until it’s thrust under their noses.

Frankie: That’s it. That’s where you’re so wrong, John. You don’t save girls from trouble, youmakeit for them.

Gwen: Quite a lotaren’ttranquil. It’s wicked to keep people from love, when you needn’t.

John: Surely you have to deal with every case on its merits. When I have a daughter——

Frankie: When you have a daughter, you won’t be talking like this.

John: I shall want my daughter to be happily married;and this is the real answer to you, Frankie. If you want a happy, lasting marriage, the love-making part of it has got to be successful.

Margaret: Yes.

John: It’s fundamental. Bed-rock. The rock on which most marriages split, and up to now it’s been just left to chance ... a girl must have absolutely no real emotional experience until she’s married. Her first real experience may alter her whole being, yet by the time she’s allowed that first experience she must have tied herself up for life. Now I don’t think that’s merely silly.I think it’s definitely wrong.

Colin: I agree with you.

John: Grandpa agrees with me. I must be right.

Colin: Yes, my child, but I think you’ve got to be extremely careful over this experimenting business of yours.

John: Why?

Colin: You’ve got the artistic temperament, God help you. Most people haven’t. The majority of ordinary respectable human beings just want quiet, uneventful, peaceful lives.

Frankie: Yes.

Colin: You can just as easily wreck people’s happiness by persuading them to go experimenting all over the place, as by denying them the right to do it.

Gwen: Don’t just say “Don’t, don’t, don’t.” That’s negative ... a denial of things. We can’t live by that.

Colin: My dear—Miss Freeman, I’m not denying the years of adventure, as John calls them. Anyhow, they’ll remain for a good many, whatever we say. But when it comes to arranging a new system, keep adventure for adventure’s sake for the unfortunate artistic people.They’ll hurt themselves. And make a song about it. But if ordinary people get into the habit of fluttering from experience to experience they damned easily lose the stability or the capacity for happiness. And undisturbed love between two people is the highest happiness.

Gwen: But supposing you don’t find it, or make a mistake the first time?

Colin: I’m not denying the right of the ordinary person to experiment, but it ought to be for the definite object of discovering a true lover, and making a lasting marriage.

John: And if you help people to find their real mates, and when they’ve made a mistake, help them out of it quietly and decently, you’ll have many more happy marriages and much less beastliness.

Colin: Yes, I agree.

Margaret(rising): Well, I’m glad we’ve settledthat!! Now I’m going home. Good night, Gwen.

Gwen: Good night.

Margaret(toFrankie): Good night ... don’t think me an abandoned woman——

Frankie: I don’t.

Margaret: Good night, John.

John: I’ll come down.

Colin: Got a cigarette, John?

John: There’s a new box on the table by the bed.

[Colingoes into the bedroom.

Margaret(at the door): Itisdark.

Gwen: I’ll put on the light; it’s just at the bottom of the stairs.

[They both disappear.

John(alone withFrankie): Please ... will you forgive me?

Frankie: I hope you’ll find someone and be very happy.

John: I hope you will, too.

[Colincomes back into the room.

Frankie: Good night, Mr. Mackenzie.

Colin: Good night.

John: I’m just going to see Margaret out.

[He followsFrankiefrom the room.Colinalone.Gwenreturns.

Colin: Hullo!

Gwen: Hullo!

Colin: I’m glad you’ve come back.

Gwen: Are you?

Colin: I suppose you wouldn’t care to come for a walk with me to-morrow afternoon?

Gwen: Yes.

Colin: Where can we go in an afternoon?

Gwen: Anywhere.

Colin: If I came for you in a car about ten, we might get down to the sea and back in time to dress for dinner and the ballet.

Gwen: That would be lovely.

Colin: Will you be ready at ten?

Gwen: Yes.

Colin: Ten o’clock then, to-morrow morning.

[Johncomes back.

Colin: I’ll be getting along. Don’t come down. Good night, John.

John: Good night.

Colin(toGwen): Good night.

Gwen: Good night.

[Colingoes.

John: I wish they’d stayed. We might have had a decent talk! I’m going to do some work.

Gwen: I’m going to bed.

[As she goes, she takes an enormous handful of cigarettes from the new box whichColinhad brought in from the bedroom.

John(noticing): Have a cigarette?

Gwen: No, thanks. I don’t smoke. Good night, dear.

John: Good night. Bless you.

[Gwengoes.Johnsettled down in a comfortable chair to a book, he gets up to find sheets of manuscript paper, a pipe and tobacco, and throws the lot down beside the chair, and gets into it again ... his father comes into the room.

Mr. Freeman: There you are.

John: Yes?

Mr. Freeman: There’s just one thing I want to say to you to-night.

John: Yes?

Mr. Freeman: Not awordof all this business to your sister.

Curtain

End of Act II

Back to Index Next