The Real Thing. Tom Stoppard

Is it anyone I know?

      CHARLOTTE You aren’t anyone I know.

      She goes out, closing the door, and then the front door is heard opening and closing. Max remains seated. After a moment he reaches down for the airport bag, puts it back on his lap and looks inside it. He starts to laugh. He withdraws from the bag a miniature Alp in a glass bowl. He gives the bowl a shake and creates a snowstorm within it. Then the snowstorm envelops the stage. Music—a pop record—makes a bridge into the next scene.

      SCENE II

      HENRY, Charlotte, Max and ANNIE.

      Henry is amiable but can take care of himself. Charlotte is less amiable and can take even better care of herself. Max is nice, seldom assertive, conciliatory. Annie is very much like the woman whom Charlotte has ceased to be.

      A living-room. A record player and shelves of records. Sunday newspapers.

      The music is coming from the record player.

      Henry, with several record sleeves around him, is searching for a particular piece of music.

      There are doors to hall, kitchen, bedroom. Charlotte enters barefoot, wearing Henry’s dressing-gown which is too big for her. She is unkempt from sleep and seems generally disordered.

      Henry looks up briefly.

      HENRY Hello.

      Charlotte moves forward without answering, sits down and looks around in a hopeless way.

      CHARLOTTE Oh, God.

      HENRY I thought you’d rather lie in. Do you want some coffee?

      CHARLOTTE I don’t know. (Possibly referring to the litter of record sleeves, wanly.) What a mess.

      HENRY Don’t worry … don’t worry …

      Henry continues to search among the records.

      CHARLOTTE I think I’ll just stay in bed.

      HENRY Actually, I phoned Max.

      CHARLOTTE What? Why?

      HENRY He was on my conscience. He’s coming round.

      CHARLOTTE (Quite strongly) I don’t want to see him.

      HENRY Sorry.

      CHARLOTTE Honestly, Henry.

      HENRY Hang on—I think I’ve found it.

       He removes the pop record, which might have come to its natural end by now, from the record player and puts a different record on. Meanwhile—

      CHARLOTTE Are you still doing your list?

      HENRY Mmm.

      CHARLOTTE Have you got a favourite book?

      HENRY Finnegans Wake.

      CHARLOTTE Have you read it?

      HENRY Don’t be silly.

      He lowers the arm on to the record and listens to a few bars of alpine Strauss—or sub-Strauss. Then he lifts the arm again.

      No … No … Damnation.

      He starts to put the record away.

      Do you remember when we were in some place like Bournemouth or Deauville, and there was an open-air dance floor right outside our window?

      CHARLOTTE No.

      HENRY Yes you do, I was writing my Sartre play, and there was this bloody orchestra which kept coming back to the same tune every twenty minutes, so I started shouting out of the window and the hotel manager—

      CHARLOTTE That was St. Moritz. (Scornfully) Bournemouth.

      HENRY Well, what was it?

      CHARLOTTE What was what?

      HENRY What was the tune called? It sounded like Strauss or somebody.

      CHARLOTTE How does it go?

      HENRY I don’t know, do I?

      CHARLOTTE Who were you with in Bournemouth?

      HENRY Don’t mess about. I’m supposed to give them my eight records tomorrow, and so far I’ve got five and Finnegans Wake.

      CHARLOTTE Well, if you don’t know what it’s called and you can’t remember how it goes, why in Christ’s name do you want it on your desert island?

      HENRY It’s not supposed to be eight records you love and adore.

      CHARLOTTE Yes, it is.

      HENRY It is not. It’s supposed to be eight records you associate with turning-points in your life.

      CHARLOTTE Well, I’m a turning-point in your life, and when you took me to St. Moritz your favourite record was the Ronettes doing ‘Da Doo Ron Ron’.

      HENRY The Crystals. (Scornfully) The Ronettes.

      Charlotte gets up and during the following searches, successfully, for a record, which she ends up putting on the machine.

      CHARLOTTE You’re going about this the wrong way. Just pick your eight all-time greats and then remember what you were doing at the time. What’s wrong with that?

      HENRY I’m supposed to be one of your intellectual playwrights. I’m going to look a total prick, aren’t I, going on the radio to announce that while I was telling Jean-Paul Sartre that he was essentially superficial, I was spending the whole time listening to the Crystals singing ‘Da Doo Ron Ron’. Look, ages ago, Debbie put on one of those classical but not too classical records—she must have been about ten or eleven, it was before she dyed her hair—and I said to you, ‘That’s that bloody tune they were driving me mad with when I was trying to write “Jean-Paul is up the Wall” in that hotel in Switzerland’. Maybe she’ll remember.

      CHARIOTTE Where is she?

      Charlotte has placed the record on the machine, which now starts to play the Skater’s Waltz.

      HENRY Riding stables. That’s it! (Triumphant and pleased, examining the record sleeve.) Skater’s Waltz! How did you know?

      CHARLOTTE They don’t have open-air dance floors in the Alps in mid-winter. They have skating rinks. Now you’ve got six.

      HENRY Oh, I can’t use that. It’s so banal.

      The doorbell rings. Henry goes to take the record off the machine.

      That’s Max. Do you want to let him in?

      CHARLOTTE No. Say I’m not here.

      HENRY He knows perfectly well you’re here. Where else would you be? I’ll say you don’t want to see him because you’ve seen quite enough of him. How’s that?

      CHARLOTTE (Giving up) Oh, I’ll get dressed.

      She goes out the way she came in, towards the bedroom. Henry goes out through another door into the hall. His voice and Max’s voice are heard, and the two men come in immediately afterwards.

      HENRY Hello, Max. Come in.

      MAX Hello, Henry.