Where does lasting work begin?
So often in a diary.
(Word of definition for those who might interpret “lasting”
to mean words typed into the Internet will survive to infinity; rather, I’m
talking “lasting” to suggest meaningful now and for generations to come. For
those who still don’t get it, browse to another blog, please.)
I literally can’t wait until the London Review of Books
publishes the latest batch of Diary entries by the playwright Alan Bennett.
They just did and here’s a sample of my favorites:
17 September.
It’s London Fashion Week and R. has to turn up at various functions. He goes
off to work this morning saying, I think: ‘I may be late home. I’ve got to get
to Paris.’
What he actually says is: ‘I may be late home. I’ll
get the carrots.’
2 October.
I suppose Allelujah!,
while not unambiguous, is the closest I’ve ever got to a political play. Some
of this is fortuitous. I have always thought that there is an element of
prophecy in plays: write it and it happens. With this play it’s been almost
embarrassing. Lest I be thought to be trailing behind the facts I should say
that Valentine’s trouble over his visa was written months before the Windrush business
and indeed the various scandals in NHS hospitals. I had originally intended
Valentine to be an older doctor, brought out of retirement by the hospital
because of a shortage of staff. In which case to refuse him a visa would have
seemed even more shocking, though no more so than the treatment meted out to
the long-established immigrants who were so callously singled out.
If not quite a platform, a play is certainly a
plinth, a small eminence from which to address the world, hold forth about
one’s concerns or the concerns of one’s characters. But not to preach. Writing
a play I have never tried to hide the sound of my own voice. It hasn’t always
been where an audience or a critic has thought to find it, and certainly not
always in the mouth of the leading character. It’s often a divided voice or a
dissenting one; two things (at least) are being said and I am not always sure
which one I agree with. But that is one reason I write plays: one can speak
with a divided voice.
In Allelujah!,
though, the last speech is given to Dr Valentine, an Asian doctor who came here
as a young man to study medicine but who outstayed his visa. So, though he is
now a good and qualified doctor and is English in all but name, he is an
illegal. In the course of the play his deception is discovered and he is
deported. In this final speech he addresses the audience directly and if my
unmediated voice is in the play, this is it:
Me, I have no place.
‘Come
unto these yellow sands and there take hands.’ Only not my hand, and so,
unwelcome on these grudging shores, I must leave the burden of being English to
others and become what I have always felt, a displaced person.
Why,
I ask myself, should I still want to join?
What
is there for me here, where education is a privilege and nationality a boast?
Starving the poor and neglecting the old, what makes you so special still?
There is nobody to touch you, but who wants to any more? Open your arms,
England before it’s too late.
9 October, Yorkshire. On departure day
for London we seldom have an outing besides, but this morning we go up to
Thornton to see antique dealers Miles and Rebecca G. They are slowly restoring
their ancient house, every week revealing hidden doors and stopped up windows,
with the latest discovery a well. Miles is as curious about his stock as a
dealer as he is about the house and today he shows us a two-plank bed from the
old prison on the Isle of Man. Low and only slightly raised off the ground, the
bed has another plank for the pillow and is covered in graffiti. During the
First World War the Isle of Man was where conscientious objectors were
imprisoned, so the bed has umpteen calendars with the days ticked off and on
the underside, almost hidden, ‘Fuck the King’. As an item the bed has the
simplicity and dignity of Shaker furniture but I don’t think I’ve ever seen an
object more soaked in wretchedness and despair.
Oh, and in terms of tips. Get your own copy of the LRB (January
3 issue), read the Diary entries, buy a nice journal, a pen, reflect and then write down
your thoughts, and little stories that make up your life.
Next: Running for Your Life: Kundera Conundrum
