Read The Complete Talking Heads Online

Authors: Alan Bennett

The Complete Talking Heads (6 page)

She put her arm through mine.
FADE OUT.
Susan:
Maggie Smith
PRODUCED BY
INNES LLOYD
DIRECTED BY
ALAN BENNETT
DESIGNED BY
TONY BURROUGH
MUSIC BY
GEORGE FENTON
SUSAN IS A VICAR’S WIFE. SHE IS THIN AND NERVOUS AND PROBABLY SMOKES. SHE SITS ON AN UPRIGHT CHAIR IN THE KITCHEN. IT IS EVENING.
G
eoffrey’s bad enough but I’m glad I wasn’t married to Jesus. The lesson this morning was the business in the Garden of Gethsemane when Jesus prays and the disciples keep falling asleep. He wakes them up and says, ‘Could you not watch with me one hour?’ It’s my mother.
I overslept this morning, flung on a cardigan and got there just as everybody was standing up. It was Holy Communion so the militants were out in force, the sub-zero temperature in the side-chapel doubtless adding to the attraction.
Geoffrey kicks off by apologising for his failure to de-frost the church. (Subdued merriment.) Mr Medlicott has shingles, Geoffrey explains, and, as is well known, has consistently refused to initiate us lesser mortals into the mysteries of the boiler. (Helpless laughter.)
Mrs Belcher read the lesson. Mr Belcher took the plate round. ‘Big day for you,’ I said to them afterwards.
The sermon was about sex. I didn’t actually nod off, though I have heard it before. Marriage gives the OK to sex is the gist of it, but while it is far from being the be all and end all (you can say that again) sex is nevertheless the supreme joy of the married state and a symbol of the relationship between us and God. So, Geoffrey concludes, when we put our money in the plate it is a symbol of everything in our lives we are offering to God and that includes our sex. I could only find 10p.
Thinking about the sermon during the hymn I felt a pang of sympathy for the Deity, gifted with all this sex. No fun being made a present of the rare and desiccated conjunctions that take place between Geoffrey and me. Or the frightful collisions that presumably still occur between the Belchers. Not to mention whatever shamefaced fumblings go on between Miss Budd and Miss Bantock. ‘It’s all right if we offer it to God, Alice.’ ‘Well, if you say so, Pauline.’
Amazing scenes at the church door. Geoffrey had announced that after Easter the bishop would be paying us a visit so the fan club were running round in small circles, Miss Frobisher even going as far as to squeeze my elbow. Meanwhile, Geoffrey stands there the wind billowing out his surplice and ruffling his hair, what ‘Who’s Who in the Diocese of Ripon’ calls ‘his schoolboy good looks’. I helped put away the books while he did his ‘underneath this cassock I am but a man like anybody else’ act. ‘Such a live wire,’ said Mrs Belcher, ‘really putting the parish on the map.’
‘That’s right,’ burbles Mrs Shrubsole, looking at me. ‘We must cherish him.’
We came back and I cherished him with some chicken wings in a tuna fish sauce. He said, ‘That went down well.’ I said, ‘The chicken wings?’ He said, ‘My sermon. I felt it hit the nail on the head.’ He put his hand over mine, hoping, I suppose, that having hit one nail he might hit another, but I said I had to go round with the parish magazine. ‘Good girl,’ he said. ‘I can attack my paperwork instead.’
Roads busy. Sunday afternoon. Families having a run out. Wheeling the pram, walking the dog. Living. Almighty God unto whom all hearts be open, and from whom no secrets are hid, cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of thy holy spirit that we may perfectly love thee and worthily magnify thy glorious name and not spend our Sunday afternoons parked in a lay-by on the Ring Road wondering what happened to our life.
When I got back Geoffrey was just off to Evensong, was I going to come? When I said ‘No’ he said, ‘Really? Then I’d better pretend you have a headache.’
Why? One of the unsolved mysteries of life, or the unsolved
mysteries of my life, is why the vicar’s wife is expected to go to church at all. A barrister’s wife doesn’t have to go to court, an actor’s wife isn’t at every performance, so why have I always got to be on parade? Not to mention the larger question of whether one believes in God in the first place. It’s assumed that being the vicar’s wife one does but the question has never actually come up, not with Geoffrey anyway. I can understand why, of course. To look at me, the hair, the flat chest, the wan smile, you’d think I was just cut out for God. And maybe I am. I’d just like to have been asked that’s all. Not that it matters of course. So long as you can run a tight jumble sale you can believe in what you like.
It could be that Geoffrey. doesn’t believe in God either. I’ve always longed to ask him only God never seems to crop up. ‘Geoffrey,’ I’d say. ‘Yes, Susan?’ ‘Do you really believe in God? I mean, cards on tables, you don’t honestly, do you? God’s just a job like any other.You’ve got to bring home the bacon somehow.’ But no. Not a word. The subject’s never discussed.
After he’d gone I discovered we were out of sherry so I’ve just been round to the off-licence. The woman served me. Didn’t smile. I can’t think why. I spend enough.
Go TO BLACK.
Come up on Susan on the steps of the side-chapel, polishing a candlestick. Afternoon.
We were discussing the ordination of women. The bishop asked me what I thought. Should women take the services? So long as it doesn’t have to be me, I wanted to say, they can be taken by a trained gorilla. ‘Oh yes,’ Geoffrey chips in, ‘Susan’s all in favour. She’s keener than I am, aren’t you, darling?’ ‘More sprouts anybody?’ I said.
On the young side for a bishop, but he’s been a prominent sportsman at university so that would explain it. Boxing or rugby. Broken nose at some stage anyway. One of the ‘Christianity is common sense’ brigade. Hobby’s bricklaying apparently and refers to me throughout as ‘Mrs Vicar’. Wants beer with his lunch and Geoffrey. says he’ll join him so this leaves me with the wine. Geoffrey’s all over him because the rumour is he’s shopping round for a new Archdeacon. Asks Geoff how outgoing I am. Actually says that. ‘How outgoing is Mrs Vicar?’ Mr Vicar jumps in with a quick rundown of my accomplishments and an outline of my punishing schedule. On a typical day, apparently, I kick off by changing the wheel on the Fiesta, then hasten to the bedside of a dying pensioner, after
which, having done the altar flowers and dispensed warmth and appreciation to sundry parishioners en route, I top off a thrill-packed morning by taking round Meals on Wheels …somehow – ‘and this to me is the miracle,’ says Geoffrey – ‘somehow managing to rustle up a delicious lunch in the interim’, the miracle somewhat belied by the flabby lasagna we are currently embarked on. ‘The ladies,’ says the bishop. ‘Where would we be without them?’
Disaster strikes as I’m doling out the tinned peaches: the jug into which I’ve decanted the Carnation milk gets knocked over, possibly by me. Geoffrey, for whom turning the other cheek is part of the job, claims it caught his elbow and his lordship takes the same line, insisting he gets doused in Carnation milk practically every day of his life. Still, when I get a dishcloth and sponge off his gaiters I catch him giving me a funny look. It’s Mary Magdalene and the Nivea cream all over again. After lunch Geoffrey’s supposed to be taking him on a tour of the parish but while we’re having a cup of instant he claps his hand to his temple because he’s suddenly remembered he’s supposed to be in Keighley blessing a steam engine.
We’re stacking the dishwasher and I ask Geoffrey how he thinks it’s gone. Doesn’t know. ‘Fingers crossed,’ I say. ‘I think there are more constructive things we could do than that,’ he says crisply, and goes off to mend his inner tube. I sit by the Aga for a bit and as I doze off it comes to me that by ‘constructive things’ he perhaps means prayer.
When I wake up there’s a note from Geoffrey. ‘Gone to talk to the Ladies Bright Hour. Go to bed.’ I’m not sleepy and anyway we’re running low on sherry so I drive into Leeds. I’ve stopped going round the corner now as I owe them a bit on the side and she’s always so surly. There’s a little Indian shop behind the Infirmary I’ve found. It’s a newsagents basically but it sells drink and anything really, the way they do. Open last thing at night, Sundays included, my ideal. Ramesh he’s called. Mr Ramesh I call him, though Ramesh may be his Christian name. Only not Christian of course. I’ve been once or twice now, only this time he sits me in the back place on a sack of something and talks. Little statuette of a god on the wall. A god. Not The God. Not the definite article. One of several thousand apparently. ‘Safety in numbers,’ I said but he didn’t understand. Looks a bit more fun than Jesus anyway. Shows me pictures of other gods, getting up to all sorts. I said, ‘She looks a very busy lady. Is that yoga?’ He said, ‘Well, it helps.’ He’s quite athletic himself apparently, married, but his wife’s only about fourteen so they won’t let her in. He calls me Mrs Vicar too, only it’s different. He has lovely teeth.
GO TO BLACK.
Come up on Susan in the kitchen near the Aga. Morning.
Once upon a time I had my life planned out …or half of it at any rate. I wasn’t clear about the first part, but at the stroke of fifty I was all set to turn into a wonderful woman …the wife to a doctor, or a vicar’s wife, Chairman of the Parish Council, a pillar of the WI. A wise, witty and ultimately white-haired old lady, who’s always stood on her own feet until one day at the age of eighty she comes out of the County Library, falls under the weight of her improving book, breaks her hip and dies peacefully, continently and without fuss under a snowy coverlet in the cottage hospital. And coming away from her funeral in a country churchyard on a bright winter’s afternoon people would say, ‘Well, she was a wonderful woman.’
Had this been a serious ambition I should have seen to it I was equipped with the skills necessary to its achievement. How to produce jam which, after reaching a good, rolling boil, successfully coats the spoon; how to whip up a Victoria sponge that just gives to the fingertips; how to plan, execute and carry through a successful garden fete. All weapons in the armoury of any upstanding Anglican lady. But I can do none of these things. I’m even a fool at the flower arrangement. I ought to have a PhD in the subject the number of classes I’ve been to but still my efforts show as much evidence of art as walking sticks in an umbrella stand. Actually it’s temperament. I don’t have it. If you think squash is a competitive activity try flower arrangement.
On this particular morning the rota has Miss Frobisher and Mrs Belcher down for the side aisles and I’m paired with Mrs Shrubsole to do the altar and the lectern. My honest opinion, never voiced needless to say, is that if they were really sincere about religion they’d forget flower arrangement altogether, invest in some permanent plastic jobs and put the money towards the current most popular famine. However, around midmorning I wander over to the church with a few dog-eared chrysanthemums. They look as if they could do with an immediate drink so I call in at the vestry and root out a vase or two from the cupboard where Geoffrey keeps the communion wine.
It not looming very large on my horizon, I assume I am doing the altar and Mrs Shrubsole the lectern, but when I come out of the vestry Mrs S is at the altar well embarked on her arrangement. I said, ‘I thought I was doing the altar.’ She said, ‘No. I think Mrs Belcher will bear me out. I’m down to do the altar.You are doing the lectern. Why?’ She smiled
sweetly. ‘Do you have a preference?’ The only preference I have is to shove my chrysanthemums up her nose but instead I practise a bit of Christian forbearance and go stick them in a vase by the lectern. In the best tradition of my floral arrangements they look like the poles of a wigwam, so I go and see if I can cadge a bit of backing from Mrs Belcher. ‘Are you using this?’ I say, picking up a bit of mouldy old fern. ‘I certainly am. I need every bit of my spiraea. It gives it body.’ I go over and see if Miss Frobisher has any greenery going begging only she’s doing some Japanese number, a vase like a test-tube half filled with gravel, in which she’s throttling a lone carnation. So I retire to the vestry for a bit to calm my shattered nerves, and when I come out ready to tackle my chrysanths again Mrs Shrubsole has apparently finished and fetched the other two up to the altar to admire her handiwork. So I wander up and take a look.
Well, it’s a brown job, beech leaves, teazles, grass, that school of thought. Mrs Shrubsole is saying, ‘It’s called Forest Murmurs. It’s what I did for my Highly Commended at Harrogate last year. What do you think?’ Gert and Daisy are of course speechless with admiration, but when I tentatively suggest it might look a bit better if she cleared up all the bits and pieces lying around she said, ‘What bits and pieces?’ I said, ‘All these acorns and fir-cones and whatnot. What’s this conker in aid of?’ She said, ‘Leave that. The whole arrangement pivots on that.’ I said, ‘Pivots?’ ‘When the adjudicator was commenting on my arrangement he particularly singled out the hint I gave of the forest floor.’ I said, ‘Mrs Shrubsole.This is the altar of St Michael and All Angels. It is not The Wind in the Willows.’ Mrs Belcher said, ‘I think you ought to sit down.’ I said, ‘I do not want to sit down.’ I said, ‘It’s all very well to transform the altar into something out of Bambi but do not forget that for the vicar the altar is his working surface. Furthermore,’ I added, ‘should the vicar sink to his knees in prayer, which since this is the altar he is wont to do, he is quite likely to get one of these teazle things in his eye. This is not a flower arrangement. It is a booby trap. A health hazard. In fact,’ I say in a moment of supreme inspiration, ‘it should be labelled HAZFLOR. Permit me to demonstrate.’ And I begin getting down on my knees just to prove how lethal her bloody Forest Murmurs is. Only I must have slipped because next thing I know I’m rolling down the altar steps and end up banging my head on the communion rail.

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