Monday, December 13, 2004
Scene Two
SCENE 2. CHARLOTTE'S KITCHEN
CHARLOTTE: How exciting! So Diana's finally got in touch?
ALAN: Yes - I thought she'd vanished. But we're going to meet up - she's set a date and everything. Not sure how she'll be: she would have had every right to cut me dead, of course.
CHARLOTTE: I don't see why it's such an issue. When we met you just shrugged it off as a teenage thing that came and went.
ALAN: Yes, Charlotte, well, when you're 18 you know all the answers! It was a teenage thing, I suppose, but it never got to closure.
CHARLOTTE: What was that joke of Ed's at university?: "We're all Thatcher's children. We all want closure!"
ALAN: It was a strange relationship, so unequal. I was this nerd - - and Diana was just amazing: relaxed, and beautiful, and smart, and cool…
CHARLOTTE: We didn't call it that then, did we? It makes me laugh when kids these days use "cool" seriously - it was always hippy crap to us. But if she was such a goddess, why did you split up?
ALAN: I was so dense. She'd gone to Italy with her parents on holiday, and I went to a party, and got off with someone else.
CHARLOTTE: I liked that phrase "got off with" - covered a multitude of sins, or lack of them.
ALAN: But then I was stupid. Or more stupid. We were so big on honesty then; I didn't just forget about it - I had to confess to Diana. When she came back, all tanned and happy, I told her about it. She just said "I see" and walked off. That was goodbye.
CHARLOTTE: So you brought it on yourself then?
ALAN: Oh yes, sure. But Christ, we were teenagers. At a party. It seems a bit hard, out of proportion, to lose something so valuable, from a minor slip like that.
CHARLOTTE: But then you met me!
ALAN: Yes, I know. But we were different, weren't we? The Two Musketeers. We were so alike. You were going to be a sculptor, I was the writer; between us we'd conquer the world.
CHARLOTTE: It seemed simple at university, all mapped out. But then you got your first college job, and I tried to combine babycare and art.
ALAN: Never enough time and money - no wonder we used to have rows. Cyril Connolly called the pram in the hallway the enemy of promise.
CHARLOTTE: There's other enemies, of course: laziness, drink, drugs. You can't say you didn't have the chance to develop your talent, such at it was.
ALAN: (LAUGHS) Such as it was, yes. It took a while for me to realise that while I had a desperate desire to be a writer, I had very little inclination to actual writing: nothing to say and not very good at saying it. It's different for you, isn't it?
CHARLOTTE: I suppose sculpture is. The challenge is to work with the qualities of the material. So my ideas for massive bronze complexes were fine: what you used to call "the things with the holes". My pottery these days, working with clay and glazes, is a different thing, not better or worse. More marketable.
ALAN: And socially inclusive too- although how you can stand working with teenage thugs, I don't know; my lot are bad enough!
CHARLOTTE: They're not so bad, really, mostly just bored. I'd rather they were stamping their individuality on the world in my ceramics project than by spraying their tags everywhere.
ALAN: Is that going to be your speech at this launch? I suppose what's funny about my writing ambition is that it seemed serious at the time. If I'd been a guitarist or footballer I'd have grown out of my teenage daydreams of stardom years before it finally clicked with me. The trouble is it's so hard to tell. You look at the successful authors, they started off as prats with pretensions beyond the call of talent.
CHARLOTTE: "All the young pseuds" as we used to say.
ALAN: So just because you behave like a wannabe writer doesn't mean you're not going to be one.
CHARLOTTE: Of course those were the days when novelists were special. Nowadays everyone writes novels: models, footballers, actors, TV gardeners.
ALAN: Not my sort of novel.
CHARLOTTE: No, popular ones! (PAUSE) But it's worked out okay - I'm getting somewhere with my pottery, and you're all sorted.
ALAN: Sort of, anyway. But I wonder whether this is how it had to be, or if there were choices I made or didn't make.
CHARLOTTE: How exciting! So Diana's finally got in touch?
ALAN: Yes - I thought she'd vanished. But we're going to meet up - she's set a date and everything. Not sure how she'll be: she would have had every right to cut me dead, of course.
CHARLOTTE: I don't see why it's such an issue. When we met you just shrugged it off as a teenage thing that came and went.
ALAN: Yes, Charlotte, well, when you're 18 you know all the answers! It was a teenage thing, I suppose, but it never got to closure.
CHARLOTTE: What was that joke of Ed's at university?: "We're all Thatcher's children. We all want closure!"
ALAN: It was a strange relationship, so unequal. I was this nerd - - and Diana was just amazing: relaxed, and beautiful, and smart, and cool…
CHARLOTTE: We didn't call it that then, did we? It makes me laugh when kids these days use "cool" seriously - it was always hippy crap to us. But if she was such a goddess, why did you split up?
ALAN: I was so dense. She'd gone to Italy with her parents on holiday, and I went to a party, and got off with someone else.
CHARLOTTE: I liked that phrase "got off with" - covered a multitude of sins, or lack of them.
ALAN: But then I was stupid. Or more stupid. We were so big on honesty then; I didn't just forget about it - I had to confess to Diana. When she came back, all tanned and happy, I told her about it. She just said "I see" and walked off. That was goodbye.
CHARLOTTE: So you brought it on yourself then?
ALAN: Oh yes, sure. But Christ, we were teenagers. At a party. It seems a bit hard, out of proportion, to lose something so valuable, from a minor slip like that.
CHARLOTTE: But then you met me!
ALAN: Yes, I know. But we were different, weren't we? The Two Musketeers. We were so alike. You were going to be a sculptor, I was the writer; between us we'd conquer the world.
CHARLOTTE: It seemed simple at university, all mapped out. But then you got your first college job, and I tried to combine babycare and art.
ALAN: Never enough time and money - no wonder we used to have rows. Cyril Connolly called the pram in the hallway the enemy of promise.
CHARLOTTE: There's other enemies, of course: laziness, drink, drugs. You can't say you didn't have the chance to develop your talent, such at it was.
ALAN: (LAUGHS) Such as it was, yes. It took a while for me to realise that while I had a desperate desire to be a writer, I had very little inclination to actual writing: nothing to say and not very good at saying it. It's different for you, isn't it?
CHARLOTTE: I suppose sculpture is. The challenge is to work with the qualities of the material. So my ideas for massive bronze complexes were fine: what you used to call "the things with the holes". My pottery these days, working with clay and glazes, is a different thing, not better or worse. More marketable.
ALAN: And socially inclusive too- although how you can stand working with teenage thugs, I don't know; my lot are bad enough!
CHARLOTTE: They're not so bad, really, mostly just bored. I'd rather they were stamping their individuality on the world in my ceramics project than by spraying their tags everywhere.
ALAN: Is that going to be your speech at this launch? I suppose what's funny about my writing ambition is that it seemed serious at the time. If I'd been a guitarist or footballer I'd have grown out of my teenage daydreams of stardom years before it finally clicked with me. The trouble is it's so hard to tell. You look at the successful authors, they started off as prats with pretensions beyond the call of talent.
CHARLOTTE: "All the young pseuds" as we used to say.
ALAN: So just because you behave like a wannabe writer doesn't mean you're not going to be one.
CHARLOTTE: Of course those were the days when novelists were special. Nowadays everyone writes novels: models, footballers, actors, TV gardeners.
ALAN: Not my sort of novel.
CHARLOTTE: No, popular ones! (PAUSE) But it's worked out okay - I'm getting somewhere with my pottery, and you're all sorted.
ALAN: Sort of, anyway. But I wonder whether this is how it had to be, or if there were choices I made or didn't make.
# posted by Martin Locock @ 4:53 AM 
