Rock 'n' Roll (10 page)

MAX
Thank you.

MILAN
So … what did you want?

MAX
You remember Jan. Anyone who gives him a job gets a visit next day and he loses the job. I'm told he's sleeping on friends' floors, living as a beggar. I thought I'd try to do him a good turn.

MILAN
Max, this is beneath you. Ask me for something worthwhile. Your friend is so unimportant, I'd be ashamed to notice his existence.

MAX
I have nothing to offer.

MILAN
Well … let me know when you have.

MAX
Do you know you turned Jan into a Chartist?

MILAN
No, but hum it to me and I'll pick it up … (
contemptuously
) Chartist! Normal people don't like Chartists, they like a quiet life, nice flat, a car, a bigger TV … All this ‘human rights' is foreigners thinking they're better than us. Well, they're not better than us.

MAX
(
more in anger than in sorrow
) But it was you who called the Charter up from the deep! Is this what I was keeping the faith for? For some stupid policemen to make a pig's arse out of a pig's ear? Czechoslovakia was forgotten. You had it all to yourselves. And simply out of annoyance, for the sake of venting your spite on a few drop-outs who were of no danger to you—
no danger at all
—you made a festival for the Western press to shit all over the idea that a better way is still possible and looks—despite everything—looks east to the source.

MILAN
Max. You know something? You fascinate me.

Max and Milan split and leave.

Jan finishes reading.

FERDINAND
We've got over two hundred signatures.

JAN
So. What are you going to do with it?

FERDINAND
Post it to Husák.

JAN
Post it.

FERDINAND
With copies to the foreign press.

JAN
Though it's not a dissident thing. You're an imbecile.

FERDINAND
Okay.

JAN
Everything's dissident except shutting up and eating shit. I wish to Christ I'd learned to play the guitar, but it's too late now. Have you got a pen?

Ferdinand gives him a pen. Jan signs, gives the Charter and the pen back to Ferdinand. He tries the turntable. He puts the Beach Boys on it, choosing the track. Ferdinand watches him uncomfortably.

FERDINAND
I'll do tapes for you. I know it's not the same. I'm really sorry, Jan.

JAN
Hey, Ferdo, it's only Rock ‘n' Roll.

The Beach Boys start singing ‘Wouldn't It Be Nice'. Jan starts picking up broken records, dumping them in a bin.

Fade to black.

End of Act One.

Blackout and ‘I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For' by U2.

Smash cut to Cambridge. Summer 1987. Garden and interior as before. Night, the interior in near-darkness.

Esme is in the garden, little more than a shadow and a glowing cigarette.

Alice enters the dining area from inside. She is sixteen, and like Esme when young, wearing Esme's old once-red-leather bomber jacket. She turns on a lamp.

ESME
Alice?

Alice comes outside.

ALICE
What are you doing, Mum?

ESME
Thinking about something.

ALICE
No, you're not, you're smoking.

ESME
I'm smoking about something.

ALICE
(
scolds) Mum.

ESME
It's not a hobby, you know. I realised who that man was and my body went, ‘Give me a cigarette.'

ALICE
What man?

ESME
That man at the supermarket who said hello.

ALICE
Who was he, then?

ESME
He was the Piper, a beautiful boy as old as music, half-goat and half-god.

ALICE
Mum, what are you smoking? He was an old baldy on a bike.

ESME
When I was your age, I mean. Is this where it's all going if we're lucky? A windy corner by a supermarket, with a plastic bag on the handlebars full of, I don't know, ready-meals and loo paper … lumpy faces and thickening bodies in forgettable clothes, going home with the shopping? But we were all beautiful then, blazing with beauty. He played on his pipe and sang to me, and it was like suddenly time didn't leave things behind but kept them together, and everything there ever was was still there, even the dead, coming up as grass or down as rain on the crematorium gardens, so I wasn't really surprised by the Great God Pan getting it together again in my, you know, spaced-out brain.

She steps on her cigarette.

ESME
(
cont.
) Ashes to ashes anyway.

She picks up the stub and throws it into hiding.

ESME
(
cont.
) There, look, I've given up, so don't nag me. What did you see? Are you hungry?

ALICE
The Great God Pan? No, I had a burger before the cinema, except I didn't go in the end, I just walked around looking to see what I could remember. It's a dump, isn't it, Cambridge?

ESME
Some people speak kindly of the college buildings, I believe.

ALICE
I mean the bus station and Jigsaw and Monsoon an' that.

ESME
‘An' that, an' that.'

ALICE
Virgin was closed … When can we go home?

ESME
(
irritated
) He's only just got out of hospital! (
pause
) Look … Grandpa's on crutches, he can't cook, he won't take the rooms the college offered him, he won't have a housekeeper, he's starting to forget things, and altogether he can't be left like this, so how would you feel if I moved back here?

ALICE
When?

ESME
Now. I think I've had Hammersmith, now you've done with Godolfyn.

ALICE
(
pleased
) Oh. You mean I'd have the flat?

ESME
No, you'd be here, with me, of course.

ALICE
What, I'd have my gap year hanging about Cambridge before starting Cambridge?

ESME
You haven't had your results yet.

ALICE
(
whines in horror
) Mum …! What about my friends?

ESME
Well, you'd make new friends.

ALICE
I don't want new friends!

ESME
Not so loud. Well, you could live with your dad, I suppose.

ALICE
There's only one bathroom, and it's in Tottenham! Anyway, with Dad three's a crowd, especially with Busty Babs from the massage parlour.

ESME
That's quite enough of that. She's an aroma therapist and I would kill for her tits.

ALICE
Why can't I have the flat? I'd be all right.

ESME
Possibly, but I wouldn't. As it happens, Dad thinks we should sell the flat and divvy it up.

ALICE
(
cross
) Oh, so you've got it all worked out, the two of you!

ESME
Now the paper's upped sticks to Wapping he wants to put his half into one of those dockland conversions … and I'd have some spare cash, which would be a novelty.

ALICE
Oh, right. Good. So Grandpa gets a free housekeeper, Dad gets trendy brick walls with river view, you get a nest egg, and I get stuffed.

ESME
(
exasperated, wailing
) Well, what else can I do? I've racked my brains …

ALICE
(
flaming
) Tell Grandpa it's a housekeeper or college or take a chance on being found dead when his phone doesn't answer—
because there are no other options.

ESME
I never thought of that.

ALICE
Sorted, then.

Alice goes indoors, changes her mind and comes back and hugs Esme. They stay hugging for a while.

ALICE
(
cont.
) Mum.

ESME
‘Only one bathroom.'

ALICE
Well.

ESME
If only you'd leave school when people are supposed to, you'd be old enough to be left, or go backpacking somewhere …

ALICE
No, Mum, take it slowly, I'd still be sixteen—waiting for my ‘O' level results.

ESME
You know what I mean, stop showing me up. (
a dismissive kiss
) Look in on Grandpa, and don't say anything, leave it to me.

Alice goes back into the interior as Max enters with some difficulty, using crutches. Apart from the leg—he has broken the neck of the femur—he is in good shape for his age.

ALICE
I was coming to see you. If you're looking for Mum, she's outside.

MAX
What's forty-three per cent of seventy-five?

ALICE
Same as seventy-five per cent of forty-three. Thirty-two and a quarter.

MAX
Thirty-two and a quarter!

ALICE
Would you like a cup of tea or anything?

MAX
I would. A small whisky. I can see this is going to work very well, you and Esme moving in.

Alice freezes, then goes out. Esme realises Max has come in. She reacts to go indoors but Max, nimble on his crutches, reaches the frontier.

ESME
Pa … I said shout.

MAX
What are you doing in the dark?

Max collapses, groaning, into a garden chair.

ESME
I came out to have a …

MAX
That bloody woman's mandate is thirty-two and a quarter per cent!

ESME
We can go in.

MAX
I've just sat down, I'm not moving. Five more years of the haves having it over the have-nots, on a mandate of less than a third of the electorate.

ESME
Isn't that good? You wouldn't want
more
people on her side, would you?

MAX
I'd put you up against Socrates. Your lack of education has made you impregnable.

ESME
(
furious
) Go to hell, then, both of you!

MAX
What's up?

ESME
If you don't know, I'm not going to tell you. (
She averts a small weep.
) I'm sick of trying to please everyone and getting patronised for my pains.

MAX
Never.

ESME
Yes, you do. In fact I know about as many things as you do—more, probably—just not career things. I must have been tripping in the water meadows the day they did Socrates. The acid queen of Cambridge High, yeah, that was a joke … And now look.

MAX
Esme …

She fails to avert the weep for a moment only.

ESME
It's Alice leaving school before I was ready. I'm running out of uses.

MAX
Alice is a great achievement.

ESME
You're doing it. Mum had me
on the sidel

MAX
Come and sit where I can reach.

Esme scrapes her chair nearer. Max takes her hand.

MAX
(
cont.
) You're not apologising for not being Eleanor, are you?

ESME
(
fiercely
) No!—I do three people's work for charlady pay in a charity shop, even if I still get my sums wrong. But I'm not Eleanor and I'm not Nico either. Nico was with the Velvet Underground. The Velvet Underground was a rock band.

MAX
I recognised the semiotics.

ESME
She had long blonde hair. I had the hair without the band, and two ‘O' levels to fall back on. I was grateful to get out of Clarendon Street into a grotty flat in the Milton Road Estate cooking Nigel's dinner with Alice at my breast. The commune got a bit hierarchical.