The Habit of Art: A Play (4 page)

The truth is, I stayed in America and did not come back when war was declared, not to save my own skin, but because I had fallen in love with Chester Kallman.

Carpenter
Why did you not say that at the time?

Auden
That I had fallen in love? I would have been put in prison.

Carpenter
Are you writing?

Auden
Am I dead?

I work.

I have the habit of art.

Carpenter
Anything in the pipeline?

Auden
Hardy would be the model. An old tree, battered, hollow, some of the branches dead…(
As Fitz.
) Yes?

ASM
(
prompting
) ‘But come the spring…’

Auden
But come the spring still on the farthest twigs putting out leaves. (
As Fitz, to Kay.
) I think I might be reading through much of this.

Kay
(
shrugs
) Of course, darling.

Auden
Poetry to me is as much a craft as an art and I have always prided myself on being able to turn my hand to anything – a wedding hymn, a requiem, a loyal toast…No job too small. I would have been happy to have hung up a shingle in the street:

‘W. H. Auden. Poet.’

Carpenter
Which is as good a time as any to say that though Auden does not know it, and nor indeed do I, in ten years or so’s time I will write his biography.

Auden
The trouble is that nowadays nobody asks me to write anything. I’m asked to pronounce, but that’s different. I’m too distinguished.

Carpenter
My father said you’d said the same to him.

Auden
Your father?

Carpenter
You sat next to him at High Table. He’s the Bishop of Oxford.

Auden
Ah! My gentleman caller.

Bishop of Oxford. Well, of course if I’d taken Holy Orders I’d have been a bishop myself by now.

Stuart
I’m Stuart. I came before. I was on time. In fact I was early, only the other guy sent me away.

Auden
Quite so. Your appointment, though not your function, has been usurped by Mr…

Carpenter
Carpenter.

Auden
He is not going to be long. You’re not from Australia?

Stuart
No. Cowley.

Henry
A little bag.

Fitz
What?

Henry
He would have a little bag. The boy. They all had little bags, call boys.

Tim
What for?

Henry
A towel. Baby oil. Stuff like that. Accessories. You could almost pick them out by the bag.

Author
I’ve never read that.

Henry
I’ve never read it either.

Kay
So. A little bag. Thank you, Henry.

Henry
Thank you.

Kay
On we go.

Carpenter
Does he keep in touch? Benjamin Britten?

Auden
And if he did why should I tell you? I don’t know you. You say you’re the son of the Bishop of Oxford, but that’s no recommendation. I saw a bishop with a moustache the other day.

Carpenter
I did actually write to you.

Auden
Did I reply?

Carpenter
No. I wrote to Mr Britten.

Auden
I’ve never heard him called Mr Britten before. Mr Britten. Makes him sound like a bodybuilder. Did he reply?

Carpenter
No.

Auden
Take the hint. It’s a long time ago.

Carpenter
You were both young.

Auden
I was never young, not until I was older. Britten was always young. He’ll be young now.

Carpenter
Whereas you are dead.

Auden
Excuse me?

Carpenter
As far as Britten is concerned. When he falls out with someone the ex-friend becomes a corpse. Never spoken of again. Still, he’s an artist.

Auden
Rubbish. Art is never an excuse for cruelty.

Carpenter
So will you talk to me?

Auden
I am talking to you.

Carpenter
Properly.

Auden
No. A lot of what is passed off as biography is idle curiosity, no different from reading someone’s private correspondence when they’re out of the room…and it doesn’t make it morally better when someone’s out of the room because they’re in the grave. If your father’s a bishop you ought to know that.

Carpenter
(
to the audience
) Writers in particular perceive biography as a threat, something I had still to learn. Poets are particularly vulnerable to biography because readers naturally assume they are sincere, that their verses are dispatches from the heart, the self at its most honest. When the biographer reveals the self is sometimes quite different, the poet is thought a hypocrite. I’m thinking of Robert Frost.

Tim
And Philip Larkin.

Fitz
Sorry? I’m confused. Is that Stuart?

Tim
No. Sorry. Me. I know because we did Larkin for A-level.

Fitz
I was going to say. Because Stuart knows nothing, presumably? He’s just a rent boy.

Henry
Rent boys sometimes find their way to the public library.

ASM
Not much trade there.

Author
The point is that Larkin and Frost, having supposedly revealed their true selves in poetry, were then shown to be somewhat different. Both were temporarily undone by biography.

Kay
Thank you. On.

Donald
(
to Kay
) Kay, we still haven’t settled where I stand when I’m talking to the audience.

Kay
Stand anywhere, dear. Just do it.

Donald
And I just go on?

Kay
Yes. Be bold.

Donald
Standing here? Or there?

Kay
There. Wherever…

Donald
I think here…

Kay
On.

Carpenter
There’s another opera, I gather. With Britten.
Death in Venice
.

Auden
Aschenbach, the writer in
Death in Venice
, is me, of course. A prisoner of respectability.

Carpenter
(
looking round at the flat
) Really?

Auden
Respectability is not a matter of soiled clothing or the occasional unwashed cup. I mean that I am no longer employable. I am venerated, monumental, shackled by my reputation. And I need to work or who am I?

Carpenter
Which do you think is your best poem?

Auden
Another foolish question.

The thing I’m proudest of having written is
The Old Man and the Sea
, an epilogue to Shakespeare’s
Tempest
.

ASM
I think that’s
The Sea and the Mirror
. You said
Old Man and the Sea. Old Man and the Sea
is by Hemingway. They had it at the Tricycle once.

Kay
(
to Fitz
) Sorry, darling.

Fitz
Not that anybody’s going to know, anyway.

Kay
On!

Carpenter
The Sea and the Mirror
is a poem I can’t understand.

Auden
It began with me thinking that the end of
The Tempest
really won’t do. The injured are made whole, the guilty repent and it’s all very neat, but I just felt there was more to be said.

Carpenter
What though?

Auden
Read the poem.

Carpenter
I have.

Auden
You should go. I’m thinking of the time.

Carpenter
I know.

Author
Hang on, hang on.

Kay
Darling?

Author
We seem to have missed something out. What’s happened to all the discussion of the poem?

Fitz
(
aside
) Shit.

Kay
What Stephen felt, darling, was that since Carpenter himself admits he doesn’t understand the poem the audience wouldn’t either.

Author
You mean it’s cut?

Kay
For the moment, darling.

Author
So why wasn’t I told?

Kay
He was going to tell you, darling, but he had to go to Leeds. You were in Newcastle and now he’s in Leeds. We can have a little look at it tomorrow.

Author
No we can’t. I’m in Cardiff.

If you cut the poem, what happens at the end when Stuart, who is Caliban, comes into his own and addresses the audience?

Kay
Oh, we’re doing that, darling.

Author
What is this play called?

Kay
Caliban’s Day
, darling.

Author
Exactly, which is prefigured in the poem and you’ve cut the poem.

Kay
We had a little talk about it…

Author
Oh, a little talk? How did it go, this little talk? One of those ‘how do we take the curse off this bit’ little talks? One of the ‘the author is his own worst enemy’ talks? Directing a matter of rescuing the author from the consequences of his folly. Plays, they don’t so much go into production as into intensive care. You none of you understand how it works. Yes, it’s about Auden, and yes it’s about Britten. But it’s also about the boy.

Donald
And it’s also about me.

Author
It’s like chimpanzees meddling with a watch.

Fitz
Charming.

Author
Can I reach him in Leeds?

Kay
His phone’s off. I’ve tried.

Author
Very convenient.

Fitz
(
aside
) Kay, I would like to get on. I’ve got a voice-over at six.

Henry
What for?

Fitz
Tesco. First of eight, apparently.

Henry
Lucky you.

ASM
(
prompting
) ‘You should go…’

Auden
You should go. I’m thinking of the time.

Carpenter
(
teasingly
) I know.

Auden
(
interrupting
) Do you mind not doing that? You should not quote a poet’s words back at him. It is a betrayal of trust. A poem is a confidence. Besides which many of my poems embarrass me. They don’t seem – Dr Leavis’s word – authentic.

People tell me off for censoring my poems, rewriting them, or cutting some well-loved lines. I tell them it’s because I can no longer endorse those particular sentiments, but it’s also because I’m fed up with hearing them quoted. (
Ironically
) ‘We must love one another or die.’ (
Shudders.
)

In the end art is small beer. The really serious things in life are earning one’s living and loving one’s neighbour.

Fitz
That’s Auden farting, not me.

Auden
What did you say your name was?

Carpenter
Carpenter.

Auden
Another son of a bishop: Field Marshal Montgomery.

Stuart
Look, mate. I know these university gentlemen. This one’s too polite to say, but he shows all the signs of not wanting you here. A more sensitive man would long since have gone for a curry.

Carpenter
You don’t even know who he is.

Stuart
I know this much. He’s a client. And I’ve got a schedule same as you. I’d go.

Carpenter
I’ve gone.

Britten
(
over music
) Quite a sprightly start, not too heavy. Lots of words, please, think what they mean. Lovely!

Carpenter
Ordering up a youth in those pre-mobile days was not as easy as it is now when the talent can be pictured and indeed sized up on the screen. Then, though, there were no trailers or forthcoming attractions, the thrill of not knowing what you were going to find on your doorstep undiminished by an electronic preview.

But not for Auden. For Auden the thrill was largely over. For him time was what mattered; the best thing about rent boys that they came by appointment. Sex on the dot.

Stuart
So you don’t want the massage?

Auden
No.

Stuart
And you don’t want relief?

Auden
No.

Stuart
And, have I got this right, you suck my dick? I don’t have to suck yours?

Auden
That is correct.

Stuart
Because it’s usually the other way round.

Auden
True. But with me the other has always been the preferred option. Weaned too soon, I suspect. Or the tongue speaks the body. (
As Fitz, to Author.
) What does that mean, author?