The Complete Talking Heads

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Authors: Alan Bennett

BOOK: The Complete Talking Heads
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In memory of Innes Lloyd
1925 — 1991
T
his collection includes the first and second series of
Talking Heads
, twelve monologues in all, together with the introductions I wrote for each series. However, it seems appropriate to include with them an earlier monologue,
A Woman of No Importance,
which was first televised in 1982 and for which I did this introduction.
I wrote
A Woman of No Importance
thinking I might direct it myself. I have never directed either for the stage or television and the possibility of having to do so accounts for the simplicity (not to say crudity) of the form: the piece is for one actress, who speaks directly to camera.
Thinking I would be able to manage at the most two cameras, I planned the play as a series of midshots with the camera tracking in very slowly to a close-up, holding the close-up for a while then, just as slowly, coming out again. I didn’t figure on there being any cuts within scenes, though this would place a heavy burden on the performer, some sections being pretty lengthy: the first speech, for instance lasts twelve minutes. To shoot in such a way makes cutting virtually impossible: one fluff, and it’s back to the top of the scene again. Autocue is one answer, but Patricia Routledge, for whom the piece was written, was anxious to avoid this, and quite rightly. Even when a performer is in full command of the text, the sight of it slowly reeling down over the camera lens exercises an hypnotic effect, and an element of the rabbit fascinated by the snake enters in. I therefore planned on using a second camera, shooting Miss Schofield in profile. This would provide a shot to which one could cut if it proved necessary to do so.
In the event, because I was working on one of the other plays, I didn’t direct the piece, which was done by Giles Foster. He adhered faithfully to the form I’d given the play, though to begin with finding the restrictions it imposed irksome and unnerving. He began by moving the play around, with Miss Schofield traversing the studio to match the movements described in the text. Rehearsal was a process of simplification whereby these movements were taken back inside the character, who ended up static in front of the camera as I had originally imagined. There are in fact some cuts within sections, when a gesture or slight turn of the head make it possible to switch to a slightly different shot without being false to the fairly relentless nature of the piece. Of course such directness and simplicity may not be thought to work. ‘Talking heads’ is a synonym in television for boredom, and here is just one head, not two. And Miss Schofield is a bore. But to have her in full close-up, retailing in unremitting detail
how she borrowed the salt in the canteen takes one, I hope, beyond tedium.
The first few lines of the play are poached. In the Festival of Britain, which I visited as a boy, there was a pavilion (I suspect I might be irritated by it now) called The Lion and the Unicorn, devoted to Englishness. It included a console where, by pressing a button, one heard snatches of typical English conversation. These had been written by (I think) Stephen Potter and were performed by Joyce Grenfell. One in. particular concerned a disaster that befell a middle-class lady, and began: ‘I was perfectly all right on the Monday. I was perfectly all right on the Tuesday. I was perfectly all right on the Wednesday. I was perfectly all right on the Thursday until lunchtime, when I just ate a little poached salmon: five minutes later I was
rolling about the floor.’
With the experience accumulated from the later monologues there are other observations I can add about the technique appropriate for their presentation. The more still (and even static) the speaker is the better the monologue works. However much the text might seem to demand it too much movement dissipates interest and raises awkward questions, chief among them, ‘Whom does this person think they’re talking to? ‘Whereas if the speaker is relatively still and the camera has them in a medium to close shot such questions do not arise. I don’t know why this should be but it is so.
There are also certain patterns in the form which, to begin with, I was unaware of but which I now see are essential to the action — and for all that there is just one person talking there is quite a bit of action. A section will often end with a seemingly throwaway remark that carries the plot forward: Violet’s remarks about Francis at the end of several of the sections of
Waiting for the Telegram
chart his separate decline; in
The Outside
Dog Marjory’s, ‘He seems to have lost another anorak, this one fur-lined,’ strikes the first note of unease about her murderous husband; and in
Playing Sandwiches
Wilfred’s ‘On my way home I called in at the sweet shop,’ alerts the audience to the fact that something dreadful is about to happen. And, of course, by the beginning of the next section it has happened as the action of these stories generally takes place in the intervals between sections, what has happened recalled by the speaker rather than narrated as it occurs.
It would be quite possible to tell these stories in a different (and a more conventional) way, a question that will be found in the introduction to the first
Talking Heads
series.
Peggy:
Patricia Routledge
PRODUCED BY
INNES LLOYD
DESIGNED BY
VIC MEREDITH
DIRECTED BY
GILES FOSTER
MUSIC BY
GEORGE FENTON
PEGGY IS A MIDDLE-AGED WOMAN. SHE TALKS DIRECTLY TO CAMERA AGAINST A NEUTRAL BACKGROUND.
I
was all right on the Monday. I was all right on the Tuesday. And I was all right on the Wednesday until lunchtime, at which point all my nice little routine went out of the window.
Normally, i.e. provided Miss Hayman isn’t paying us one of her state visits, come half past twelve and I’m ready to down tools and call it a morning. I put on a lick of paint, slip over and spend a penny in Costing …I should technically use the one in Records but I’ve told them, that lavatory seat is a death trap. And I’m not ringing up again. ‘Try a bit of sellotape.’What are they paid for? I’ll then rout out Miss Brunskill from 402 and we’ll meander gently over for our midday meal. But you just have to hit it right because, give it another five minutes, and believe me that canteen is dog eat dog.
However if you can manage to nip in before the avalanche you have the pick of the tables and there’s still some semblance of hygiene. Our particular stamping ground is just the other side of the bamboo framework thing they tried to grow ivy up. It’s what Miss Brunskill calls ‘our little backwater’. We’re more or less fixtures there and have been for yonks. In fact Mr Skidmore came by with his tray last week just as we were concluding our coffee and he said, ‘Well, girls. Fancy seeing you!’ We laughed. Girls! Mr Skidmore generally gravitates to the table in the far corner under that silly productivity thermometer-type thing. ‘Export or Die’. It’s actually broken — stuck anyway — but it’s where management tend to foregather since we’ve had this absurd ‘All Barriers Down’ policy. Once upon a time management had tables roped off. That’s gone, only they still congregate there. ‘Huddling together for warmth,’ Mr Rudyard calls it. I said to Mr Cresswell, ‘You can tell who’s an activist.’ We laughed, because anybody more conformist than Mr Rudyard you couldn’t want, and he has beautiful fingernails. Of course once the management started frequenting that particular table sure enough Miss Hayman and the Personnel brigade pitch camp next door. And she’ll turn around and chat to Mr Skidmore over the back of her chair. She never used to have all that hair.
Our table though we’re very much the happy family. There’s me, Miss Brunskill, Mr Cresswell and Mr Rudyard, Pauline Lucas, who’s ex-Projects … to tell the truth she’s still Projects, only she’s in Presentation wearing her Projects hat. Then there’s Trish Trotter (when she’s not in one of her ‘bit of cheese and an apple’ phases); Joy Pedley pays us the occasional visit, but by and large that’s the hard core. Trish Trotter is the
only one with a right weight problem but we’re all salad fanatics and keep one another in line. I have to watch my stomach anyway and salad suits Miss Brunskill because she’s a big Christian Scientist. But to add that bit of excitement I bring along some of my home-made French dressing. Mr Cresswell keeps pestering me to give Mr Rudyard what he calls ‘the secret formula’. He’s a keen cook, Mr Rudyard. Little moustache, back like a ramrod, you’d never guess it. I pretend there’s a mystery ingredient and won’t let on. We laugh.
People are a bit envious of us, I know. I ran into Mr McCorquodale the other day when we were both queueing in (guess!) Accounts and he said, ‘You do seem to have a good time at your table, Peggy. What do you talk about?’ And I didn’t know. I mean, what do we talk about? Pauline’s mother keeps getting a nasty rash that affects her elbows. We’d been discussing that. Mr Cresswell and Mr Rudyard were going in for some new curtains for their lounge and were debating about whether to have Thames Green. And I was saying if Thames Green was the green I thought it was I liked it in a front door but wasn’t keen on it in curtains. So that made for some quite lively discussion. And Trish Trotter had got hold of some new gen on runner beans as part of a calorie-controlled diet, and we kicked that around for a bit. But honestly, that was all it was. I don’t know what we do talk about half the time! My secret is, I don’t talk about myself. When Joy Pedley went to Thirsk on a ‘Know Your Client’ course that was apparently the whole gist of it: concentrate on the other person. I said, ‘Well, I’ve no need to go to Thirsk to learn that. It’s something I’ve been born with.’ We laughed.
Once we’ve lined up our eats and got the table organised Miss B. gets her nose into her crossword while I scan the horizon for the rest of the gang. I have to be on my toes because there’s always some bright spark wanting to commandeer them and drag them off elsewhere. I don’t think people like to see other people enjoying themselves, basically. Take Pauline Lucas. The other day, she came in with young Stuart Selby. He’s ginger, and when Mr Oyston went up into Accounts and Mrs Ramaroop moved to Keighley, Stuart did a bit of a dog’s hind leg and got into Costing. Him and Pauline were making a bee-line for the window, which is in the Smoking area. Now Pauline doesn’t smoke, in fact rather the reverse. So I sang out, ‘You’re not deserting us, are you Pauline? Fetch Stuart over here. See how the other half lives!’ So she did. Only halfway he ran into Wendy Walsh and it ended up just being me and Pauline. I said to her, ‘That was a narrow escape.’ She said, ‘Yes.’ We laughed. Her acne’s heaps better.
And then look at Mr Cresswell and Mr Rudyard. It’s the biggest wonder last week they didn’t get sat with the truck drivers. They were dawdling past with their trays and there was room but luckily I just happened to be going by en route for some coffee and saw which way the wind was blowing and rescued them in the nick of time. They were so grateful. I said ‘You two! You don’t know you’re born!’ They laughed.
However, as I say, on this particular Wednesday I’m in the office, it’s half past twelve and I’m just thinking, ‘Time you were getting your skates on, Peggy,’ when suddenly the door opens and nobody comes in. I didn’t even look up. I just said, ‘Yes, Mr Slattery?’ He was on his hands and knees with a pro forma in his mouth. Anybody else would have got up. Not him. He crawls up to me, pretending to be a dog and starts begging, this bit of paper in his mouth! I thought, ‘You’re a grown man.You’ve got a son at catering college; your wife’s in and out of mental hospital and you’re begging like a dog.’ I enjoy a joke, but I didn’t laugh.
Surprise, surprise he’s after a favour. The bit of paper is the Squash Ladder. Would I run him off two dozen copies? i said, ‘Yes. By all means. At two o’ clock.’ He said, ‘No. Now’ Wants to put them round in the lunch hour. I said, ‘Sorry. No can do.’ I haven’t forgotten the works outing. Running round with that thing on his head. He was like a crazed animal. I said, ‘Anybody with an atom of consideration would have come down earlier. Squash Ladder! It’s half past twelve.’ He said, ‘It’s not for me.’ I said ‘Who’s it for?’ He said, ‘Mr Skidmore.’
Pause.
Well, as luck would have it I hadn’t actually switched the machine off. And, knowing Trevor Slattery, Mr Skidmore had probably asked him to do it first thing and he’d only just got round to it. I know Mr Skidmore: courtesy is his middle name. But it did mean I didn’t get out of the office until twenty to, by which time of course there’s no Miss Brunskill. Any delay and La Brunskill’s off like a shot from a gun, plastic hip or no plastic hip.
By this time of course the canteen is chock-a-block. I was five minutes just getting inside the door, and if I’d waited for a please or thank you I’d be stood there yet..They looked to be about to introduce martial law round the salad bowl so I thought, ‘Little adventure, I’ll opt for the hot dish of the day, steak bits or chicken pieces.’ I knew the woman doling it out because she gets on the 56. She’s black but I take people as they come, and seeing it was me she scrapes me up the last of the steak bits. I topped
it off with some mushrooms, and trust me if I didn’t get the last of the yogurts as well. I heard somebody behind me say ‘Damn’. I laughed.
I beetled over to our table but no Pauline, no Mr Cresswell and no Mr Rudyard. It’s a cast of unknowns and only Miss Brunskill that I recognise. I said, ‘Didn’t you save me a place?’ She said, ‘I thought you’d been and gone.’ Been and gone? How could I have been and gone, she knows I’m meticulous. But I just said, ‘Oh’ rather pointedly, and started touring round.
Eventually I pinpoint Pauline sat with little Stuart Selby, only there’s no room there either. ‘Scattered to the four winds today, Pauline,’ I said. ‘Yes,’ she said, and he laughed. I see she’s starting another spot.
I trek over to the far side and blow me if Mr Cresswell and Mr Rudyard aren’t sat with all the maintenance men, some of them still in their overalls. Mr Cresswell is smoking between courses, something he never does with us, a treacle sponge just stuck there, waiting. Mr Rudyard is having a salad and I wave my jar of French dressing in case he wants some but he doesn’t see me because for some reason he’s not wearing his glasses.
Just then I spot somebody vacating a place up at the top end. I say, ‘Room for a little one?’ only nobody takes on. They’re young, mostly from Design, moustaches and those little T-shirty things, having some silly conversation about a topless Tandoori restaurant. I start on my steak bits, only to find that what she’s given me is mainly gristle. I don’t suppose they distinguish in Jamaica. I thought, ‘Well, I’ll have a little salt, perk it up a bit,’ but as luck would have it there’s none on the table, so I get up again and go in quest of some. The first salt I spot is on the table opposite, which happens to be the table patronised by the management; and who should be sat there but Mr Skidmore. So I asked him if I could borrow their salt. ‘Excuse me, Mr Skidmore,’ was what I said, ‘but could I relieve you temporarily of your salt?’ I saw Miss Hayman’s head come round. She’d naturally think I was crawling. I wasn’t. I just wanted some salt. Anyway, Mr Skidmore was very obliging. ‘By all means,’ he said. ‘Would you like the pepper too?’ I said, ‘That’s most civil of you, but I’m not a big pepper fan.’ So I just took the salt, put a bit on the side of my plate and took it back. ‘Much obliged,’ I said. ‘Don’t mention it,’ Mr Skidmore said. ‘Any time.’ He has impeccable manners, they have a big detached house at Alwoodley, his wife has had a nervous breakdown, wears one of those sheepskin coats.
I suddenly bethought me of the Squash Ladder, so just after I’d replaced the salt I said, ‘Oh, by the way, I ran you off those copies of the Squash Ladder,’ not in a loud voice, just person to person. He said, ‘What?’
I said, ‘I ran you off those copies of the Squash Ladder.’ He said, ‘Squash Ladder?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ He said, ‘Not my pigeon.’ I said, ‘Why?’ He said, ‘Didn’t you know? There’s been a flare-up with my hernia.’ Well I didn’t know. I can’t see how I would be expected to know. Somebody laughed. I said, ‘Oh, I am sorry.’ He said, ‘I’m not. Blessing in disguise. Squash is Slattery’s pigeon now.’
I went back to my table and sat down. I felt really sickened. He’d done it on me had Mr Slattery.
After a bit Trish Trotter rolls up and parks herself next to me. She says, ‘Are you not eating your steak bits?’ I said, ‘No.’ She said, ‘Don’t mind if I do,’ and helps herself. She shouldn’t wear trousers.
Anyway it was that afternoon that I first began to feel really off it. I went home at half past four.
FADE QUICKLY TO BLACK.
Still shot of her desk: very neat. A single flower in a glass. Typewriter with its cover on.
I want the tableaux between scenes to look like still life paintings.
Peggy is now sat against another neutral background, wallpaper possibly — something to indicate she is at home.
I don’t run to the doctor every five minutes. On the last occasion Dr Copeland sat me down and said, ‘Miss Schofield. If I saw my other patients as seldom as I see you I should be out of business.’ We laughed.
He’s always pleased to see me: gets up when I come into the room, sits me down, then we converse about general topics for a minute or two before getting down to the nub of the matter. He has a picture of his children on the desk, taken years ago because the son’s gone to Canada now and his daughter’s an expert in man-made fibres. He never mentions his wife, I think she left him, he has a sensitive face. Cactuses seem to be his sideline. There’s always one on his desk and he has a Cactus Calendar hung up. This month’s was somewhere in Arizona, huge, a man stood beside it, tiny. I looked at it while he was diddling his hands after the previous patient.
There was a young man in the room and Dr Copeland introduced me. He said, ‘This is Miss …’ (he was looking at my notes) ‘Miss Schofield. Mr Metcalf is a medical student; he’s mistaken enough to want to become a doctor.’ We laughed, but the boy kept a straight face. He had on one of those zip-up cardigans I think are a bit common so that didn’t inspire
confidence. Dr Copeland said would I object to Mr Metcalf conducting the examination provided he was standing by to see I came to no actual physical harm? We both laughed but Mr Metcalf was scratching a mark he’d found on the knee of his trousers.
Dr Copeland put him in the picture about me first: ‘Miss Schofield has been coming to me over a period of twelve years. Her health is generally good, wouldn’t you say, Miss Schofield?’ — and he was going on, but I interjected. I said, ‘Well, it is good,’ I said, ‘but it’s quite likely to seem better than it is because I don’t come running down to the surgery with every slightest thing.’ ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘If I saw my other patients as seldom as I see Miss Schofield I should be out of business.’ He laughed. The student then asked me what the trouble was and I went through the saga of the steak bits and my subsequent tummy upset.

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