Monologue was first shown on BBC Television on 13 April 1973.
MAN Henry Woolf
Directed by Christopher Morahan
Man alone in a chair.
He refers to another chair, which is empty.
MAN
I think I'll nip down to the games room. Stretch my legs. Have a game of ping pong. What about you? Fancy a game? How would you like a categorical thrashing? I'm willing to accept any challenge, any stakes, any gauntlet you'd care to fling down. What have you done with your gauntlets, by the way? In fact, while we're at it, what happened to your motorbike?
Pause.
You looked bold in black. The only thing I didn't like was your face, too white, the face, stuck between your black helmet and your black hair and your black motoring jacket, kind of aghast, blatantly vulnerable, veering towards pitiful. Of course, you weren't cut out to be a motorbikist, it went against your nature, I never understood what you were getting at. What is certain is that it didn't work, it never convinced me, it never got you onto any top shelf with me. You should have been black, you should have had a black face, then you'd be getting somewhere, really making a go of it.
Pause.
I often had the impression … often … that you two were actually brother and sister, some kind of link-up, some kind of identical shimmer, deep down in your characters, an inkling, no more, that at one time you had shared the same pot. But of course she was black. Black as the Ace of Spades. And a life-lover, to boot.
Pause.
All the same, you and I, even then, never mind the weather, weren't we, we were always available for net practice, at the drop of a hat, or a game of fives, or a walk and talk through the park, or a couple of rounds of putting before lunch, given fair to moderate conditions, and no burdensome commitments.
Pause.
The thing I like, I mean quite immeasurably, is this kind of conversation, this kind of exchange, this class of mutual reminiscence.
Pause.
Sometimes I think you've forgotten the black girl, the ebony one. Sometimes I think you've forgotten me.
Pause.
You haven't forgotten me. Who was your best mate, who was your truest mate? You introduced me to Webster and Tourneur, admitted, but who got you going on Tristan Tzara, Breton, Giacometti and all that lot? Not to mention Louis-Ferdinand Céline, now out of favour. And John Dos. Who bought you both all those custard tins cut price? I say both. I was the best friend either of you ever had and I'm still prepared to prove it, I'm still prepared to wrap my braces round anyone's neck, in your defence.
Pause.
Now you're going to say you loved her soul and I loved her body. You're going to trot that old one out. I know you were much more beautiful than me, much more aquiline, I know that, that I'll give you, more ethereal, more thoughtful, slyer, while I had both feet firmly planted on the deck. But I'll tell you one thing you don't know. She loved my soul. It was my soul she loved.
Pause.
You never say what you're ready for now. You're not even ready for a game of ping pong. You're incapable of saying of what it is you're capable, where your relish lies, where you're sharp, excited, why you never are capable … never are … capable of exercising a crisp and full-bodied appraisal of the buzzing possibilities of your buzzing brain cells. You often, I'll be frank, act as if you're dead, as if the Balls Pond Road and the lovely ebony lady never existed, as if the rain in the light on the pavements in the twilight never existed, as if our sporting and intellectual life never was.
Pause.
She was tired. She sat down. She was tired. The journey. The rush hour. The weather, so unpredictable. She'd put on a woollen dress because the morning was chilly, but the day had changed, totally, totally changed. She cried. You jumped up like a … those things, forgot the name, monkey on a box, jack in a box, held her hand, made her tea, a rare burst. Perhaps the change in the weather had gone to your head.
Pause.
I loved her body. Not that, between ourselves, it's one way or another a thing of any importance. My spasms could be your spasms. Who's to tell or care?
Pause.
Well … she did … can … could …
Pause.
We all walked, arm in arm, through the long grass, over the bridge, sat outside the pub in the sun by the river, the pub was shut.
Pause.
Did anyone notice us? Did you see anyone looking at us?
Pause.
Touch my body, she said to you. You did. Of course you did. You'd be a bloody fool if you didn't. You'd have been a bloody fool if you hadn't. It was perfectly normal.
Pause.
That was behind the partition.
Pause.
I brought her to see you, after you'd pissed off to live in Notting Hill Gate. Naturally. They all end up there. I'll never end up there. I'll never end up on that side of the Park.
Pause.
Sitting there with your record player, growing bald, Beethoven, cocoa, cats. That really dates it. The cocoa dates it. It was your detachment was dangerous. I knew it of course like the back of my hand. That was the web my darling black darling hovered in, wavered in, my black moth. She stuttered in that light, your slightly sullen, non-committal, deadly dangerous light. But it's a fact of life. The ones that keep silent are the best off.
Pause.
As for me, I've always liked simple love scenes, the classic set-ups, the sweet … the sweet … the sweet farewell at Paddington Station. My collar turned up. Her soft cheeks. Standing close to me, legs under her raincoat, the platform, her cheeks, her hands, nothing like the sound of steam to keep love warm, to keep it moist, to bring it to the throat, my ebony love, she smiles at me, I touched her.
Pause.
I feel for you. Even if you feel nothing … for me. I feel for you, old chap.
Pause.
I keep busy in the mind, and that's why I'm still sparking, get it? I've got a hundred per cent more energy in me now than when I was twenty-two. When I was twenty-two I slept twenty-four hours a day. And twenty-two hours a day at twenty-four. Work it out for yourself. But now I'm sparking, at my peak, up here, two thousand revolutions a second, every living hour of the day and night. I'm a front runner. My watchword is vigilance. I'm way past mythologies, left them all behind, cocoa, sleep, Beethoven, cats, rain, black girls, bosom pals, literature, custard. You'll say I've been talking about nothing else all night, but can't you see, you bloody fool, that I can afford to do it, can't you appreciate the irony? Even if you're too dim to catch the irony in the words themselves, the words I have chosen myself, quite scrupulously, and with intent, you can't miss the irony in the tone of voice!
Pause.
What you are in fact witnessing is freedom. I no longer participate in holy ceremony. The crap is cut.
Silence.
You should have had a black face, that was your mistake. You could have made a going concern out of it, you could have chalked it up in the book, you could have had two black kids.
Pause.
I'd have died for them.
Pause.
I'd have been their uncle.
Pause.
I am their uncle.
Pause.
I'm your children's uncle.
Pause.
I'll take them out, tell them jokes.
Pause.
I love your children.
