Read Complete Poems and Plays Online
Authors: T. S. Eliot
Tags: #Literature, #20th Century, #American Literature, #Poetry, #Drama, #v.5, #Amazon.com, #Retail
G
OMEZ
.
And what about you?
L
ORD
C
LAVERTON
.
I don’t take it, thank you.
G
OMEZ
.
A reformed character!
L
ORD
C
LAVERTON
.
I should like to know why you need to trust
me.
G
OMEZ
.
That’s perfectly simple. I come back to England
After thirty-five years. Can you imagine
What it would be like to have been away from home
For thirty-five years? I was twenty-five —
The same age as you — when I went away,
Thousands of miles away, to another climate,
To another language, other standards of behaviour,
To fabricate for myself another personality
And to take another name. Think what that means —
To take another name.
[
Gets
up
and
helps
himself
to
whisky
]
But of course you know!
Just enough to think you know more than you do.
You’ve changed your name twice — by easy stages,
And each step was merely a step up the ladder,
So you weren’t aware of becoming a different person:
But where
I
changed my name, there was no social ladder.
It was jumping a gap — and you can’t jump back again.
I parted from myself by a sudden effort,
You, so slowly and sweetly, that you’ve never woken up
To the fact that Dick Ferry died long ago.
I married a girl who didn’t know a word of English,
Didn’t want to learn English, wasn’t interested
In anything that happened four thousand miles away,
Only believed what the parish priest told her.
I made my children learn English — it’s useful;
I always talk to them in English.
But do they think in English? No, they do not.
They think in Spanish, but their thoughts are Indian thoughts.
O God, Dick,
you
don’t know what it’s like
To be so cut off! Homesickness!
Homesickness is a sickly word.
You don’t understand such isolation
As mine, you think you do …
L
ORD
C
LAVERTON
.
I’m sure I do,
I’ve always been alone.
G
OMEZ
.
Oh, loneliness —
Everybody knows what that’s like.
Your loneliness — so cosy, warm and padded:
You’re not isolated — merely insulated.
It’s only when you come to see that you have lost
yourself
That you are quite alone.
L
ORD
C
LAVERTON
.
I’m waiting to hear
Why you should need to trust me.
G
OMEZ
.
Perfectly simple.
My father’s dead long since — that’s a good thing.
My mother — I dare say she’s still alive,
But she must be very old. And she must think I’m dead;
And as for my married sisters — I don’t suppose their husbands
Were ever told the story.
They
wouldn’t want to see me.
No, I need one old friend, a friend whom I can trust —
And one who will accept both Culverwell and Gomez —
See Culverwell as Gomez — Gomez as Culverwell.
I need you, Dick, to give me reality!
L
ORD
C
LAVERTON
.
But according to the description you have given
Of trusting people, how do you propose
To make it worth my while to be trustworthy?
G
OMEZ
.
It’s done already, Dick; done many years ago:
Adoption tried, and grappled to my soul
With hoops of steel, and all that sort of thing.
We’ll come to that, very soon. Isn’t it strange
That there should always have been this bond between us?
L
ORD
C
LAVERTON
.
It has never crossed my mind. Develop the point.
G
OMEZ
.
Well, consider what we were when we went up to Oxford
And then what I became under your influence.
L
ORD
C
LAVERTON
.
You cannot attribute your … misfortune to
my
influence.
G
OMEZ
.
I was just about as different as anyone could be
From the sort of men you’d been at school with —
I didn’t fit into your set, and I knew it.
When you started to take me up at Oxford
I’ve no doubt your friends wondered what you found in me —
A scholarship boy from an unknown grammar school.
I didn’t know either, but I was flattered.
Later, I came to understand: you made friends with me
Because it flattered
you
— tickled your love of power
To see that I was flattered, and that I admired you.
Everyone expected that I should get a First.
I suppose your tutor thought you’d be sent down.
It went the other way. You stayed the course, at least.
I had plenty of time to think things over, later.
L
ORD
C
LAVERTON
.
And what is the conclusion that you came to?
G
OMEZ
.
This is how it worked out, Dick. You liked to play the rake,
But you never went too far. There’s a prudent devil
Inside you, Dick. He never came to
my
help.
L
ORD
C
LAVERTON
.
I certainly admit no responsibility,
None whatever, for what happened to you later.
G
OMEZ
.
You led me on at Oxford, and left me to it.
And so it came about that I was sent down
With the consequences which you remember:
A miserable clerkship — which your father found for me,
And expensive tastes — which you had fostered in me,
And, equally unfortunate, a talent for penmanship.
Hence, as you have just reminded me
Defalcation and forgery. And then my stretch
Which gave me time to think it all out.
L
ORD
C
LAVERTON
.
That’s the second time you have mentioned your reflections.
But there’s just one thing you seem to have forgotten:
I came to your assistance when you were released.
G
OMEZ
.
Yes, and paid my passage out. I know the reason:
You wanted to get rid of me. I shall tell you why presently.
Now let’s look for a moment at
your
life history.
You had plenty of money, and you made a good marriage —
Or so it seemed — and with your father’s money
And your wife’s family influence, you got on in politics.
Shall we say that you did very well by yourself?
Though not, I suspect, as well as you had hoped.
L
ORD
C
LAVERTON
.
I was never accused of making a mistake.
G
OMEZ
.
No, in England mistakes are anonymous
Because the man who accepts responsibility
Isn’t the man who made the mistake.
That’s your convention. Or if it’s known you made it
You simply get moved to another post
Where at least you can’t make quite the same mistake.
At the worst, you go into opposition
And let the other people make mistakes
Until your own have been more or less forgotten.
I dare say you did make some mistake, Dick …
That would account for your leaving politics
And taking a conspicuous job in the City
Where the Government could always consult you
But of course didn’t have to take your advice …
I’ve made a point, you see, of following your career.
L
ORD
C
LAVERTON
.
I am touched by your interest.
G
OMEZ
.
I have a gift for friendship.
I rejoiced in your success. But one thing has puzzled me.
You were given a ministry before you were fifty:
That should have led you to the very top!
And yet you withdrew from the world of politics
And went into the City. Director of a bank
And chairman of companies. You looked the part —
Cut out to be an impressive figurehead.
But again, you’ve retired at sixty. Why at sixty?
L
ORD
C
LAVERTON
.
Knowing as much about me as you do
You must have read that I retired at the insistence of my doctors.
G
OMEZ
.
Oh yes, the usual euphemism.
And yet I wonder. It
is
surprising:
You should have been good for another five years
At least. Why did they let you retire?
L
ORD
C
LAVERTON
.
If you want to know, I had had a stroke.
And I might have another.
G
OMEZ
.
Yes. You might have another.
But I wonder what brought about this … stroke;
And I wonder whether you’re the great economist
And financial wizard that you’re supposed to be.
And I’ve learned something of other vicissitudes.
Dick, I was very very sorry when I heard
That your marriage had not been altogether happy.
And as for your son — from what I’ve heard about
him,
He’s followed your undergraduate career