Nowadays of course, we are a decent place. Good exam results, not much of a drug problem, high in the League Tables and so on. Not that that cuts much ice with the Haitch Emm Eye, you know. They still suspect us of being too different for comfort. Well, perhaps we are, and vive la difference, say I.

The place was started by a fellow called Tigger Birnam and his widowed sister, Mrs. Minchinhampton. She taught singing, knitting and French, and Tigger filled in the blanks as well as he could. He had a glass eye and a wooden leg. He used to introduce the topic of his leg whenever he could.

“Now many of you know,” he’d begin, and their little hearts would sink, knowing what was coming; “that I have a wooden leg, or to give it its proper name, a prosthetic device. You, Farquharson! Can you spell ‘prosthetic’?”

“Sir, yes sir, please sir. Pee, arr, owe, ess, tee, aitch…”

“All right Farquharson. No need to show off. Now, this is my sound leg,” he would bellow, catching his good leg a hearty thwack with his stout blackthorn: “Nothing wrong with this one!” Another wallop with the blackthorn, causing every pupil to gasp and jump. “No, this is the wooden one!” he’d bawl, giving it an even heartier whack.

One day he gave his wooden leg such a wallop that it came loose from the parent stump. It slipped its moorings and slithered down his trouser leg to clatter to the floor. Half the pupils passed out cold, and Tigger keeled over sideways, stiffing and blinding all the way, coming to the earth with an almighty crash that caused a certain amount of cheering and a few more to faint dead away. One lad had to throw up the window and be sick into the camellias.

Mrs. Hodge the cleaner came to the rescue, having heard the tumult, and took over while Tigger hopped out of the room to the gents, to strap the fugitive limb back in place.

“Open your books to page fifty-eight and do the exercise!” she yelled, one hand holding on to her mop and the other akimbo. This was a formula that had served her well whenever she had been forced to step in to cover if Tigger or Mrs. Minchinhampton was indisposed. It was a throwback to her own schooldays, I suppose, and she made the best use of her education. Whether the weans actually had any books, or any with as many as fifty-eight pages in was immaterial. They just preferred the smack of firm government and the sense that someone was In Charge. They settled down with a sense of relief that the Grand Guignol had stopped, and that Tigger hadn’t started going on about his glass eye!

Tigger had read a book by Jakob Schnellentaten, the Swiss educationalist, and it had tickled his fancy to the extent that he claimed his school was run on Schnellentaten principles. It wasn’t, of course. It was just him and his sister dong their best according to their fairly dim lights. It wasn’t until Tigger employed old Peter Potocki that the place really became a Schnellentaten school. He had not only read the Helvetian scholar’s works, he had understood them. He persuaded Tigger to employ Edeltraut Runkelstirn to teach Harmony of the Spheres, the Schnellentaten version of Music and Movement, you know, all done with nighties and lengths of chiffon, and more and more people started sending their chislurs to the place. Tigger watched gloomily, doing less and less as other, more qualified people came along to teach, including myself.

What a crew we were, old man! Edeltraut, the lofty Norwegian with no sense of  the real world; old Tom Hobbes, who kept his Gentleman’s Standfast walking stick with the detachable handle filled to the brim with stimulants to sharpen the concentration between lessons; Malcolm Tregorran, who thought that he was the only person in Scotland truly to understand the teachings of Jakob Schnellentaten, and quoted him whenever he could; Yorick Warwick, a man who had turned down several invitations from Insane Asylums all over these islands, and was generally one jump ahead of the law most of the time; Ingmar Svensson the Swedish woodwork teacher, who went round enveloped in a thick, impenetrable fog of melancholy; Irmgard von Bösendorfer, a strapping Wagnerian heroine: what a galère, old man! Some of them were more or less normal, of course. Daisy Barnet, for instance, or Iain Donaldson the Music teacher. Larry Snudge was more or less human, most of the time, as was Graham Ridgeway.

Well, the years rolled by and no one got any younger, but the place was now established firmly on Schnellentaten lines, at least, when Peter Potocki had anything to do with it, and wasn’t hampered in his endeavours by Tigger.

Then, one day, the bombshell dropped. The Haitch Emm Eye was coming to visit. Their coming was announced in a flurry of paper that turned out to be a vast number of forms that had to be filled in and sent back by return, so that the inspectors knew what to look for and how to sneer at us with the greatest effect. Most of this work fell to Potocki and Daisy Barnet, who both beavered away into the small hours, while Tigger poked his head round the door to shout words of encouragement.

“Non Illegitime Nil Carborundum,” he’d bellow, “Don’t let the bastards grind you down!” and he’d toy with his moustaches for a moment or two before stumping off. It became clear that the main thing would be to keep Tigger Out Of Sight while the Expectorant was going about its lawful but bloody irritating occasions.

In fact, when they turned up, three men in suits and spectacles, and a sour-faced woman in a black two-piece, Tigger hid himself in a cupboard and stayed there. The female among the mob actually tried the cupboard door, looking for ghastly secrets, and couldn’t open it. She rattled the door; until Tigger said in an uncharacteristically querulous alto, “Go away!”

She raised her eyebrows and went on her way, making copious notes in her HMI stationery. In fact, she didn’t last long. Fate intervened with her in an unexpected way. She had made her way over to the Tiny Tots department, and found Mrs. Minchinhampton gathering the mushrooms that grew on the lawn.

“Have you done a risk assessment on the plants that grow in the garden here?” said this female.

“Oh,” said the Minchinhampton with a smile that would have been winning if it hadn’t exposed a row of yellow fangs; “they’ve all been chosen for their safety as much as for their beauty!”

This was no way to soothe the female’s savage and concave breast.

“And what are these?” she demanded, pointing at the basket full of fungi. “They look like mushrooms to me!”

“Oh, they are,” gushed Minchinhampton. They’re absolutely delicious!”

“Hm. You’re sure that they aren’t poisonous?”

“Oh, no. No no no no no. They’re wonderful. Come with me and I’ll show you. It’s all in the preparation, you see. They are quite exquisite! Much more flavourful than chanterelles.”

The Inspector woman was won over, and allowed herself to share the mushrooms with Mrs. Minchinhampton, and after a couple of hours they were both rushed to the local looney bin, raving. The Minchinhampton had gathered the wrong mushrooms and was now paying the price, along with the dour female.

A lesser incident occurred when one of the younger inspectors was sitting in on one of Tom Hobbes’s lessons. This weedy streak of sewage suddenly started to engage one of the pupils in conversation. Hobbes boiled over with wrath.

“Kindly don’t talk while I’m giving instruction!” he yelled, in a voice like a pirate captain issuing orders to a crew of dangerous cutthroats. The fellow went white and apologised profusely. Hobbes slammed out of the room and took a snort from his Gentleman’s Standfast. All the inspector could see was his shadow on the corridor wall outside the classroom as he did so, and could make no sense of it. He saw the outline of Hobbes’s figure raising an object of some size, and thought Hobbes was coming for him with some terrible weapon. He fainted clean away. Luckily some of the pupils in the class had a first aid badge, and managed to revive him. While they were at it they practised their bandaging, and left him in the staff room, trussed like a mummy. That left two, and Potocki and Daisy managed to satisfy their questions, at least to some extent. Whether the fate of their colleagues had any effect on them we don’t know. It hasn’t come down to us, old man. They don’t vouchsafe much, these Inspectorate people, except reams of bad news. We didn’t come through with flying colours, as we didn’t follow the guidelines that they were familiar with, and there was a sort of sneaking suspicion that their unfortunate colleagues had not been treated with sufficient respect. But we weren’t closed down, and Potocki managed to put the most positive spin on what they did say for the benefit of the parents and the Board of Governors.

We learned much later that the female of the troupe had recovered from her episode, but had left the profession and joined the Scottish Nationalists, advising them on education, with a lot of frowning and pursing of lips, particularly where we were concerned. The other chap, the pale, sensitive one, we heard from a roundabout source, had received the Call, and gone off to a distant island to convert the natives. Perhaps it was all for the best, but he didn’t seem to me to have any of the crusading zeal or fire of conviction. I hope he didn’t give them indigestion.

Mrs. Minchinhampton never returned from the asylum, but worked her way up from the ranks of bull-goose looney to matron, where she was very happy. Tigger withdrew more and more from public life, ending up living on a houseboat on the Union Canal. Evidently he put his floor through a rotten floorboard one night, and it sank with all hands. They fished out a wooden leg from the canal at Ratho, but it wasn’t his.

Anyway, one way or another, we’d passed the test, and that’s what matters in the long run. It isn’t the Haitch Emm Eyes of this world that matter so much as the strength of character one brings to them, after all. Yes, it’s a demanding life at the chalk face, old man, especially at St. Geoffrey’s. And this here glass, and many others like it, is the way to deal with it. Cheers.

I got hold of a set of Linguaphone records and sat down, all earnest endeavour, you know, pencil and pad in hand, and out of the loud speaker there came the most dreary tale, told in a dismal monotone by one Herr Lind, who gradually vouchsafed the secrets of his domestic ménage in a voice that hinted at woe and tragedy unfathomable. Well, it was as much as I could do to listen to more than a couple of these discs without losing the will to live.

I took the Linguaphone records back to the library, put my last couple of quid on a horse in a desperate mood of devil-may-care, and the animal romped home at a hundred to eight! My money worries were dealt with and the other difficulty sorted itself out, as outlined above; but all that’s neither here nor there. Ingmar Svensson, now, the woodwork teacher: that’s the point. He’s a Swede, and he ran true to the type of his tribe. Gloomy, don’t you know; morose. He had only to enter the staff room for the joy factor to decrease by several points. Even the temperature dropped, old man! He carried misery around with him like an old mackintosh.

I’ll give you an example. Malcolm Tregorran had hit upon the notion of taking a bunch of twelve year-olds out to a neighbouring farm, to see how things grow, you see, and where potatoes and such come from. Well, all this was very educational, and Svensson went along for the ride to help keep the chislurs in order, stop them from self-immolation under the wheels of combine harvesters and so forth, you know the drill.

The dairyman there offered the weans the chance to milk a cow, but none took him up on the offer, so Svensson stepped up to the mark, having grown up on a farm in Skåne and knew a cow’s bag from one end to the udder, if you, er. Hmph. Well.  All went well at first; there was clearly rapport between man and beast. All was serenity and union between them and the bucket was filling with the white and foaming, when the creature stepped back and placed a hoof squarely on Svensson’s toe. It must have been sheer agony, old man, and you or I would have bellowed a ripe and choice selection from the Chief Petty Officer’s Book of Common Prayer. But Svensson was too melancholic for that. He just grunted, and sat for a while contemplating the appropriate course of action, I suppose. Then, all of a sudden, he stood, emptied the contents over the cow’s head, hung the bucket on its horns and limped off, muttering darkly in Swedish, probably something along the lines of quietus making with a bare bodkin; you know the score, old man. (By the way, what is a bodkin? Is it? Good God! Well, there you are; it just goes to show!)

Well, one day, old Peter Potocki drew Svensson aside into the cobwebby little cubbyhole where we keep the boxes of chalk and the photocopy machine, and there in the gloom, he invited him to take on the teaching of R.E. Religious Education, old man! The Kiss of Death! I saw him as he emerged from the cubbyhole. It was pitiful. He simply hadn’t had the strength of will to Put Up A Fight. He came out with the round-shouldered mien as one who would say, who would fardels bear, and so on, you know. He met the school cat at the door, and didn’t so much give it a sly nudge with his toe as convert it, rugby style, over the high branch of the beech tree in the drive. The look of startled affront on its face as it landed among the hollyhocks is stamped on my memory as an archetype of the emotion, old man. According to Mrs. Hodge the cleaner, the cat was right off its milk for a week.

Poor old Svensson took to carrying an enormous great big, black Bible around with him everywhere he went. He would sit and read it in the staff room, sighing with increasing miserability as he turned the pages. Sometimes he would mutter: “Terrible! Terrible! Such a scoundrel!” Somebody, such as Daisy Barnet, would ask who he meant and Svensson would reply, “God! He is the most dreadful fellow!”

This kind of thing went on regularly. Svensson would read another bit of Scripture and ooze out into the corridor like toxic waste.

Graham Ridgeway the maths chap with the tee-haitch trouble would try to put an alternative view.

“I fink you’ll find vat vere are uvver interpretations vat show vat it’s not all to be taken quite so literally…”

But it was no good. Svensson continued with his fundamentalist reading, and we all watched helplessly as he spiraled ever downwards into wretchedness. He was still teaching woodwork, of course, but a cupboard that he was helping one of the senior girls make was taking on more and more the lines of a coffin. He would be seen polishing it late at night, and singing lugubrious Scandinavian psalms. It was reaching the Tipping Point, old man, and no mistake! Hobbes claimed to have seen him sleeping in it, but he may just have been over-imbibing from his home brewed spirits.

Then, one day, Svensson came into the staff room with a strange glint in his eye, and an unfamiliar set to his features, as though he was bent on some outrageous course of action, like a Mormon considering drinking a cup of coffee. All reckless abandon, don’t you know. We all held our breath and waited. He was silent for a while, and then, he spoke.

“You know Ignatius, Moses rode a motorbike!”

Well, that was unexpected if you like! Holding my briefcase in front of me for protection, I edged towards the door, ready to make a bolt for the phone to summon the Muscular Gentlemen in the White Coats. It had clearly all become Too Much for the poor man. He went on, his eyes gleaming with unholy light.

“Willie McGlumpher in the Eighth Class pointed it out to me! It says: ‘The roar of Moses’ Triumph was heard in the hills!’ ”

There was a ghastly moment of silence, and then Svensson burst out into loud, shrieking maniacal laughter! Daisy Barnet went deathly white; the lovely Deborah started rummaging in her bag for Bach Flower remedies for the bewildered Swede; Yorick Warwick stared at him for a full thirty seconds before realising that he had decanted the contents of his mug of tea into his lap and had no time to change before his next lesson. (That caused some talk among the fourteen year olds, who already thought him, quite correctly, capable of anything!)

But the change was astonishing! And it had Set In, old man! He met me a few days later wearing a terrifying grin, and told me that an epistle was the wife of an apostle. And again, he went off into those unearthly shrieks of laughter.

In the coming weeks he was full of them. Joshua knocked down the walls of Jericho with his horns; one of the first opossums was Matthew, who was also a taxi man; Noah’s wife was called Joan of Ark; in the Book of Guinness’s, God made the world in six days, got tired and took the Sabbath off; Lot’s wife was a pillar of salt by day but a ball of fire by night: and so on. Larry Snudge made a habit of passing by the room where Svensson was teaching R.E. and always reported the same thing: howls of laughter, the loudest coming from Svensson. I think the pupils weren’t so much laughing at the howlers but at Svensson’s reaction to them. Well, it was a case of sink or swim! Stand back and be horrified by the spectacle of a middle-aged Swede holding his ribs together and gasping for breath as the hilarity threatened his health and well-being, or join in. For the most part, they joined in.

The fact of the matter was that Svensson had Seen the Funny Side. The rot was setting in, old man. I knew the signs. Nor was I wrong, as you shall hear.

All was different in the staff room! Svensson would read the Bible as usual, but now, instead of sighing with pain, he would be chuckling. One day he turned to me and said: “You know what faith is, Ignatius? It’s the quality that allows you to believe what you wouldn’t in your right mind. That’s Willie McGlumpher’s view. But it’s true, isn’t it! The kid’s perfectly right!”

There was no answer to that, of course. Not on the spur of the moment, anyway.

I got hold of young McGlumpher by the ear one lunch break, and asked him what was going on.

“Well,” says he, “Mister Svensson always seemed so sad, so I thought I’d try to cheer him up. I’ve got a book with some jokes in, and I tell them to Mister Svensson.”

It cheered him up, all right. But it didn’t stop there, old man! More was to come! One day, I caught him reading the Bible, and he was neither groaning with existential agony nor chuckling with mirth. He was sitting with raised eyebrows, nodding and looking thoughtful. Well, from there on in, it was all downhill, old man. He joined a church and became a lay reader, known for his cheerful and sunny disposition. I spotted him one Sunday, coming out of St. Asaph’s dressed in a suit of sober black, carrying a Bible and surrounded by a gaggle of blue-rinsed molls who obviously adored him. One of them was saying: “He makes it all so lively and interesting!”  “And such a lovely smile!” said another.

“Come down to the Glenbogle Hotel and have a sharpener,” I called to him, meaning to rescue him, you know, from the clutches of these harridans.

“I can’t,” he said, “I’ve got a Bible study group!”

He did! That’s exactly what he said. You could have sucked me up with a Hoover, old man; you could have crumpled me into a ball.

It was a sort of miracle, I suppose. I collared Potocki about it, and said I laid the blame squarely at his feet. He just shrugged and lit his eighty-fifth cigarette of the day.

“Who can tell how the Call will come?” he said, and I suppose that about covered it, though I thought it was a pretty shifty answer myself. Potocki went round humming to himself and smiling seraphically, which rather made me wonder whether he hadn’t been the Hidden Genius behind the whole thing. I wouldn’t put it past him. Thanks old man, I’ll have another of these.

Well, Stuckedahl came to teach Physics. I mean, we met him! We interviewed him! We heard him talk! We heard that dreadful bluebottle drone, and yet we gave him a job! So we had only ourselves to blame. He ticked all the boxes otherwise, I suppose. Knew his stuff, and had a list of degrees like a bagful of Scrabble letters. He said a lot of high minded stuff in the interview about the need to ‘nersh and enkerge young people’, which we took to mean ‘nourish and encourage.’ He looked good on the staff list, there’s no doubt. But as soon as he opened his mouth – Gee and Jay! Here, give us a fill up there! Thanks.

Larry Snudge, of course, thought he was a “character”! He would, the worm! He’d sit hanging on Stuckedahl’s lips, waiting for what he called ‘the Mark Twain Moment’, when the dreadful Yank would say something either witty or wise. Well, Snudge was a dyed-in-the-wool Americophile, or whatever the word is. He worshipped all things Transatlantic, even Canadian! So the awful drone of the fellow’s voice didn’t seem to phase him at all. Whenever Stuckedahl started on any topic whatever, people would look at their watches, mutter about time pressing on, and the staff room would empty, except for Snudge, grinning like a porpoise in hope of a fish.

One day old Tom Hobbes was consulting with Ingmar Svensson, the woodwork teacher, about getting his Mucvishk Distillery souvenir walking stick rebored, in the hope that it could contain even more of the drop that revives and stimulates. Stuckedahl overheard the conversation, and decided to add his two-pennorth.

“Of course, what you could do once you’ve drilled out the cane is to fill it with sherry, or port, if you will, but some kind of fortified wine, preferably from the Iberian peninsula, and leave it for a few years, or several, actually – “

Hobbes turned and looked at the man in disbelief.

“Fill it with sherry?” he roared, “Fill it with sherry? What the hell would I do that for?” This was tampering with things close to Hobbes’s heart, old man; a thing no one did lightly.

“Many of the more reputable or better class, if you will, of Scottish distilleries pour their whisky into barrels that have contained sherry or a similar fortified wine. It is said to impart a certain flavour to the finished product that is sought after by certain aficionados or connoisseurs, if you will, of whisky – “

Hobbes interrupted him again, his eyes beginning to boil over with rage.

“And what am I supposed to do in the meantime?” He bellowed, his fists clenching and unclenching as he tried to decide whether to throttle the man or simply rain blows on his head. “I leave my stick standing, according to your scheme, letting sherry – “ (he gave the word all the contempt he could muster) – “letting sherry soak into the works, for several years? What, in the name of all that’s holy, do I do in the meantime? Answer me that!”

Stuckedahl, apparently completely unaware of the threat of total immolation that stood, turning slowly beetroot, before him, took up the challenge without batting a leathery, reptilian eyelid.

“You could always follow the example of the Irish playwright Brendan Behan. He would, according to some authorities, fill his pockets with miniatures, small bottles of spirituous liquor, so that he would never be caught without the necessary means of – “

Hobbes was visibly giving off steam now.

“I don’t give a damn about the Irish fucking playwright Brendan Behan,” he thundered, just as poor Daisy Barnet came in. “Would you have me going about clinking like the morning milk wherever I go? YOU MUST BE BLOODY INSANE!”

Daisy went pale and fell into a soft chair, overcome. The beautiful Deborah had to rush round with chamomile tea, while Snudge fanned her with his silk scarf. Hobbes crashed out to terrorise the fourteen year olds in his History class, effing and blinding as he went.

“From Class Nine to that,” poor Daisy moaned, massaging her temples with a few drops of eau-de-cologne.

“I really don’t see what he had to get so upset about,” said Stuckedahl, with Buddha-like composure. He was right in a way, of course. What he wasn’t able to factor in, as we have to say now, is his reputation, richly deserved, as a crashing bore. He had no idea, old man. No idea at all. He was as the babe unborn when it came to insight and self-knowledge, like most of us, as it happens.

“I tink he take his valking-stick very serious,” Svensson explained with Scandinavian conciseness.

“Well, I wasn’t trying to undermine his sensitivities in that regard…” Stuckedahl droned on as he stuffed a few papers into his bag before going off to push back the frontiers of knowledge.

“Mind you,” said Daisy, when Stuckedahl had left to anaesthetise the Higher Physics class with his soporific tones, “if he has that effect on us, think what he does to the kids!”

“They just fall asleep,” said the lovely Deborah, who had an inside connection to the pupils through a niece, who relayed a lot of useful information that, between ourselves, influenced a lot of unofficial policy, such as which bits of the campus to avoid during breaks, so as not to catch the smokers and romantic pairings. What the eye doesn’t see, don’t you know.

Well now, do you remember the visit of His Holiness the P. a few years since, and how he blessed, or broke a bottle of champagne, or whatever it was, over some sort of concrete erection in Fife dedicated to World Peace? No, very few people do. Anyway, this was a very big event, telly cameras and so forth. Stuckedahl had the notion of having a similar ceremony on our side of the Forth.

“It could seriously raise the profile of our school in the local community and even city-wide,” he began in his affectless drone, and his idea was passed on the nod, or just before we all nodded off, anyway. So Svensson, who could turn his hand to that sort of thing, got to work, and eventually produced a sort of roughly octagonal block of stone with eight polished surfaces. On each surface he had chiselled ‘Let Peace Prevail In The World’ or words to that effect, in eight languages. Or at least, he thought he had! But mark the sequel!

The Press were invited, and all the mums and dads, of course, and various local dignitaries. It was quite a swell affair, old man. The kids were all decked out with flags of all nations, and we sang songs and generally pushed the notion that world peace is a good thing. Malcolm Tregorran read out a piece in sonorous vocables he had composed about burying hatchets, turning swords into ploughshares, getting on with each other, and all that rhubarb, and a little band of Senior School students gathered round a battered old guitar, and sang a Bob Dylan song without looking too embarrassed or sounding too feeble. Then came the speeches from the Visiting Dignitaries!

One of these was something in the Procurator Fiscal’s office, and a fluent Gaelic speaker. He couldn’t forebear to mention that the side of the rock that had Gaelic on it had nothing about letting peace prevail, or anything of the sort. Instead, it read in English translation: “The Badness of the Dog is On the Ground.” He merely mentioned it in light-hearted spirit, expecting that a few strokes with a chisel would sort the matter out. But it was true enough. Poor old Svensson had copied the text wrongly. He’d put in a couple of wrong letters, left off an accent or two and exchanged a C for a G, or something, and the result was there for all the world to see. Poor old Svensson didn’t emerge from his woodwork shop for days. He was in a complete Scandinavian melancholy tailspin, old man. Pitiful to see.

The Press loved it, of course! The young reporter from the Evening Echo asked who was behind the whole jamboree, and we credited Croft Stuckedahl, with one voice. The Echo piece ran something like: “The event was the brian-child – sic, old man – of US teacher of Physical Training, Stoft Cruckedahl.” And on and on in the same vein, skating lightly over the facts entirely within its own world of fantasy, as these things so often do! It raised the profile of the school, all right, not only in the local community, or even city wide, but all the Gaeltacht knew about our joke rock, too. The Gaelic column in the Glasgow Bugle had a lot of fun at our expense, but fortunately, very few of our mums and dads could understand it, and lived in Edinburgh anyway, where the readership of the paper was minimal.

Well, this was something that woke up the senior Physics students. Stoft Cruckedahl became Stuffed Crocodile, which they began calling him, or Mister Crocodile to his face. At first Stuckedahl took it in fairly good grace.

“I think the energy of anarchism in the young is a very good thing to nurture and nersh and enkerge. I believe that the Reverend Spooner himself showed the way tord a method of subversion that has a potent satirical edge. For myself, I welcome the…The…”

And then he stopped! Amazingly, he’d run out of steam! Those of us who were heading out of the staff room as his monotone began remained poised on the threshold. Stuckedahl was lost for words! Old Stuckedahl was as silent as a real stuffed crocodile. It was a strange and marvellous thing to see, old man; a consummation devoutly to be wished, and it had come true before our wondering eyes!

The kids weren’t silent on the subject, though. I myself heard one eight year old ask him what he was doing outside Chambers Street Museum where all the other stuffed animals lived. Stuckedahl gritted his tiny teeth.

“Brace up, old man,” I whispered to him; “nersh and enkerge! Nersh and enkerge, don’t you know!”

But the die was cast, old man. He left shortly before the end of the Summer Term, mourned only by Snudge, who clung to his Yankomania, and belief in the Mark Twain moment, though to my knowledge, it never came. But it just goes to show, old man. It just goes to show! Yes, I’ll have another of those.

These days of course, it’s all a carefully structured career, with increments of pay and promotion and all that. But the people who turned up at St. Geoffrey’s in the old days, old man! What a galère! What a crew! Tom Hobbes and his hollow knobkerry with the removable top, full of the drop that revives and stimulates, for instance; who would ever let him loose on a bunch of the young and impressionable these days? Or Yorick Warwick?  The man was a positive danger to the body politic! And who else would have given paid work and responsibilities to Edeltraut Runkelstirn, rather than a secure environment and occupational therapy, I mean? Or myself, even! My teaching practice consisted of being shunted into a room full of twelve year olds who took not a blind bit of notice of anything I said and threw plasticine at each other and at me. Some of those bits of plasticine stung, too, let me tell you! I think they little rascals hid marbles inside the pellets and let fly. At the end of it all, old Peter Potocki came in and said I’d got the job! I protested. I said, but I taught them nothing! I’m all over bruises from their terrible fusillades of green modelling gunk. He just patted me on the shoulder and told me that none of them had actually left the room, so I was in.

But the thing is, in the early days, a nodding acquaintance with the works of Jakob Schnellentaten was enough to secure you a post with a tiny stipend and no hope of promotion, no career structure and damn all fringe benefits, apart from the long holidays, which is quite a draw, between ourselves, as you well know!

Well, those days are long past and behind us, thank God! Of course a lot of people expect our lot to be an eccentric crew, but when all’s said and done, the education game is full of cranks and weirdoes of the first water, and I’m not just talking about staff, either!

In the dear dead days unfortunately not beyond recall – in fact seared into the memory banks with a welder’s torch – I enjoyed the pedagogical attentions of the Christian Brothers, as I’ve mentioned before. Brrr! A shiver runs down the spine at the thought, old man! How we survived it I’ll never know. Probably we all thought that this was how it was and ever would be, world without end amen.

There were a couple of fellows who used to chum round together at the school where I did my youthful porridge, demonstrating the truth of the maxim that opposites attract. One was a creature from the Home Counties of England, and the other was a spindly, exophthalmic chap from the Sub Continent called Rittoo, whose father used to sharpen up the scimitars at their embassy. He’d been foisted on us when he’d cut himself once too often on daddy’s handiwork, presumably on the theory that if he was going to blunder his way into an early demise, it was better to do it out of sight and out of mind, and not stain the embassy carpets. We had, oddly enough, a cadet corps attached to the place, and Rittoo was noticeable on parade by the inches of striped pyjama that hung down under his khaki battledress trousers, shading his winkle-pickers from view. Quite a good wheeze, this, in fact, as that khaki serge used to chafe the inner thigh like hell! So he had some notion of self-preservation after all. Anyway, his pal Badger Brock was the creation of some Baron von Frankenstein who cobbled him together out of solid granite and hair, and then force-fed him on steroids and monkey glands, until more suitable fare could be found, such as live rhino. He was the original Immoveable Object, all right, as visiting Rugby teams found out to their horror and chagrin. He was the only fellow I’ve known to giggle on receiving a sound thrashing with the pandybat. Water off a duck’s back, old man! He was absolutely impervious. It drove the Brothers mad, but what could they do? Badger was a Force of Nature.

They were in the chem lab one day, and Rittoo took it into his head to hold the earpiece of his specs in the Bunsen burner flame. Badger of course mentioned in the spirit of friendly advice that this way tragedy lay, tears before bedtime and so forth. Rittoo, always on his dignity, riposted with some force that he knew more about plastics than Badger did, suggesting a hinterland of specialist knowledge picked up in the hols, and himself on the royal road to a prosperous future in an up and coming industry; the gleam of impending vocation in his bulging eye.

At that moment, his gig-lamps burst into flame. The fire alarm went off and there was chaos; blood and snot everywhere as we all scrambled to muster on the front lawn for a head count. This was standard procedure, to make sure that no hapless bairn was trapped in the conflagration and reduced to a greasy spot on the floor, and if such was the horrible case, said greasy spot would have to be soaked up with blotting paper and sent to the sorrowing parents with a few words of condolence and a disclaimer for all responsibility from the school’s lawyers.

All was returned to what we laughingly called normal, and no one the worse, except poor old Rittoo, who went round stumbling into the furniture for a month afterwards, barking his shins on the desks and perforating his face with his fork at meal times, shoving mince up his nose in an effort to reach his bucktoothed gap, until a spare pair of unburned goggles could be found in a drawer at the embassy, given a polish and delivered by a spotty Herbert on an NSU Quickly.

Another vision that comes to the inner eye from the halcyon days is of Brother Bernard wresting by main force a four ten shotgun from a muscular young psychopath who thought it was perfectly reasonable to have such a thing sticking out of his tuck box ready for use when things got too stressful. He was what we call troubled these days. He grew up to be something big in the SAS, and is now retired and living in Shropshire with a chest full of medals. Well these are the people who grew up to take over. Us, in other words. It’s our generation, old man, and we’ve no one but ourselves to blame for the mess that we find ourselves in. All the more reason to try to do right by the weans in our care to redress the balance, or our fading hours in the Twilight Home will be too grisly a prospect to contemplate.

You see the problems all over, old man. Witness the trip that Yorick Warwick and Daisy Barnet did, taking the fifteen year olds to London for an educational beano. You’d never think that Yorick and Daisy would team up for anything, let alone a jaunt to the Mother of Parliaments. God knows what Yorick might have got up to with a band of teenagers and a chemistry set. He might have been bunged in the chokey for ever, and no bad thing either, if you ask me. But he’d been fairly quiet for a few weeks following a bout of flu, and Daisy was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. Well, Yorick wasn’t the problem on this trip, as it turned out, and neither were the chislurs, bless their little hearts. They hired a coach from a firm called Coach Caledonia – First In The Field. It was painted the length of their old bus, but this didn’t explain that it indicated a tendency to veer off the road into the scenery before any other old crate on the road. The firm was run by a pair of  brothers in bottle glass specs called Wullie and Angus, who had to hold the map within a centimetre of their dusty old lenses to get their bearings. Yorick and Daisy got the first hint that they had perhaps made a poor investment in travel solutions when they were approaching the first roundabout on the journey to London from Edinburgh. There was one brother at the wheel and the other in the seat usually reserved for the guide with the microphone: needless to say a luxury not included on this trip.

The brother at the wheel turns to the brother in the guide’s seat and yells in a voice clearly audible to the back of the bus.

“Angus,” he calls, “there a roundabout comin’ up!” The note of panic was clear to all, even the teenagers.

“Dinnae worry, Wullie,” cries the other brother, and they perform a complicated shuffle as the bus lurches along at breakneck speed. The second brother comes and sits on the lap of the first brother, who then tries to slide out from under once the second brother has the controls firmly in hand, and the bus is no longer careering wildly all over the carriageway. It transpires that Wullie doesn’t do roundabouts. Angus has to take over each time one looms up, which means a complicated pantomime takes place every half hour, or less, until they hit the motorway. So it’s “Haud on, Wullie! Ah’ve goat the gear stick up mah erse!” and similar admonitions, for the length of the Borders country.

The next thing Daisy and Yorick notice is that they stop at every services en route! The reason for this becomes clear when, bowling down a long, arid stretch of road, one of the teenagers asks for the door to the w.c. to be opened.

“Naw,” says Angus. “Cannae dae it.” Well, very properly, Daisy comes forward to demand why not, perfectly reasonable request, girls of a certain age sometimes need the toilet in a hurry. It turns out that the toilet on the bus is out of service, as some connection with the engine was broken when going over a humped-back bridge in Dumfriesshire. Hence the frequent service stops. In the meantime, all those needing the facilities have to cross their legs and hope for no bumps in the road.

Ah well, they thought, at least London will be interesting. On arrival in the great metrop, Yorick asks Wullie, still at the wheel, to take them to Westminster for a gawp at the Houses of Parliament and similar objects of veneration.

“Whaur’s that aboot?” says Wullie. Seemingly, the First in the Field have no clue about the geography of the English capital city, and peering through dusty lenses at the tatty old A to Z doesn’t make them any the wiser. Yorick points to their elegant brochure, in particular to the sections about Coach Caledonia being intimately familiar with the great sites of interest in these islands.

“Naw naw,” says Angus; ”see that wis done when we had a boy workin’ wi’ us that kent aw they places: Stonehenge, White Cliffs o’ Dover; aw that.”

“So he’s no longer with you?” says Yorick, fixing the fellow with a beady eye.

“Nuh. He wis siphonin’ diesel oot the tanks and sellin’ it tae the taxi drivers. We hud tae gie ‘im the boot.”

“So,” says Yorick, slowly hauling this in and trying to get a clear view of the situation, “you have no idea how to get to Westminster.”

“Aye.”

“Or anywhere else?”

“We’ve got the map, likes. Dinnae worry!”

“Oh, but I do,” says Daisy, who has been keeping a close eye on the brothers all the way. Meanwhile the teenagers have formed a clear idea of their position, and are now issuing catcalls and throwing crisp packets and coke bottles at the Responsible Adults. One young lad pipes up that he can drive a large vehicle, having driven his dad’s lorry from Newcastle to Penzance once when his dad was unexpectedly taken drunk. However, Neither the brothers nor Daisy can countenance this solution to their difficulties, so junior has to slump back into his seat, grumbling. Yorick was all for giving him a try, but he was outvoted by the grown-ups.

Eventually they all manage to return to Edinburgh, in spite of a few wrong turnings round the Great Wen, and more than a few terrifying moments as roundabouts loom, and on the way back, Daisy asks Angus how they came to be in this business, for which they are so evidently and patently unsuited, though she kept that aspect of the enquiry to herself.

“It’s the romance o’ the open road,” says Angus; “the rumble o’ the diesel, the shiftin’ o’ the gear. The rhythm as you’re rollin’ is music tae the ear, ye ken.”

“Call it a sense o’ vocation,” says Wullie from the driver’s seat. “Whoa! Roundabout comin’ up!”

And it was all legs in the air and beer bellies rolling and scrabbling for lost spectacles among the pedals for miles and miles – not to mention one roundabout driven over in a straight line, crushing the municipal daffodils – until the gates of St. Geoffrey’s hove into view at last. Daisy staggered out of the bus into the arms of Tom Hobbes, who poured her a sharpening drop from his screw-top cromak – and which for once she accepted – and said that if ever she believed in angels, she certainly believed in them now, it being altogether miraculous that they had arrived sound in wind and limb, though the nervous toll cost everyone a few months off their allotted span. Apart from Yorick of course, who, inspired by the adventure, had a bright gleam in his eye that augured the return of his inner daimon, and things soon settled back to normal. The kids apparently told their parents that the trip was “all right” in that lacklustre, affectless way that adolescents have, so all was ticket and boo, as Edeltraut used to say, until old busybody Larry Snudge corrected her. Thanks old man, I’ll have the same again. Here’s to adventure and survivors everywhere!

in the sea air off the lough,

and at the end, because my hands were raw,

too sore to barrow them all out,

I let the weeds lie, smudged

and stringy with the pulling.

That night, Paul let the cows into the field

where all the ragwort lay.

They plodded, trusting, down

towards the shore-hedge,

grazing here and there,

warm breath rising in the sunset

like clouds of dim confidence.

Next afternoon, the vet came

with a long, hollow knife.

A cow lay

rolling her bulging eyes to show

the dark-veined whites, her guts

distended like a galleon sail,

a fallen zeppelin with a crazy idol’s head.

The vet swore blind

it wasn’t ragwort poisoning,

but there was his knife,

and the bursting eyes’ distress.

I felt their reproach

like asthma.

in the big black bowler hat?

Come away from the doorway, child;

come back here out of that!

His teeth are splinters of graveyard stone

and his eyes are balls of fire ;

his nose is as sharp as a raven’s beak

and his ears are telephone wire.

His voice is a croak, his voice is a squeak,

his voice is a shout in the dark;

he’s the man on the corner of Sinister Street;

he’s a shadow glimpsed in the park.

The lines on his face are thick with dust

and the grass dies where he stands;

his skin is clammy and cold as a frog

there are seventeen fingers on each of his hands.

I’ve seen him behind the playground walls,

he curses and spits and swears,

pulling the hair from the heads of dolls.

and the eyes off the teddy bears.

His pockets are full of mouldy crusts,

there are papers stuffing his case;

I can hear the jingling of hundreds of keys

when his grin cracks open his face.

Spiders come tumbling out of his sleeves,

his collar is thick with flakes;

every joint in his body creaks,

and each bone in his skeleton aches.

And every lie that ever he told

is a scab encrusting his heart.

He dare not sneeze, he dare not cough

for fear it falls apart.

The air around his hat is thick

with the buzzing of thousands of flies,

and every fly is the token true

of every one of his lies.

What must we do to get rid of him, mam?

He frightens my sister and me.

Show him his face in a mirror, my boy;

it’s the last of him you’ll see.

LYSISTRATA – a free adaptation from the Greek of ARISTOPHANES

This play is, obviously, based on the original Greek play by Aristophanes. Whereas the original is very direct and uncompromising, this version uses more innuendo and suggestion, rather in the tradition of music hall and the Carry-On films.

Some characters and scenes have been added to help a more contemporary approach, in particular, the character of Gaythelos, the highly camp servant to Lysistrata, and the two old men.

The theme, however, is the eternally serious one of the desirability of love over lust and peace over conflict.

Age – 16 upwards

Characters:-

LYSISTRATA an Athenian woman

CLEONIKE    _.._

MYRRHINE  _.._

LAMPITO a Spartan woman

GAYTHELOS a slave

MAGISTRATE of the city of Athens

COXIAS an old man

BOXIAS another

NICODIKE another Athenian woman

CALYKE another ditto

CRATYLLE yet another

ISMENE a young wife

THEONOE another

CINESIAS a young man dying for love of his wife MYRRHINE

SLAVE to CINESIAS

CASSANDRA an old woman

HERALD 1 a herald

HERALD 2 another

PEACE a beautiful goddess

LYSISTRATA

Scene 1 – GAYTHELOS, LYSISTRATA, CLEONIKE, LAMPITO, MYRRHINE

GAY: (Enters looking back over his shoulder. Addresses audience directly) Honest to Zeus, I don’t know what’s got into her! Ever since the men all went off to the wars, she’s been so grumpy. She’s been going round chatting to all the old women of the city, plotting and planning, though Zeus knows what! And now it’s even worse! She’s got a bunch of women in there today from all over Greece! Oh yes! Sparta, Beotia, Anagyras, you name it! And the weird thing is, all those provinces are at war with each other! Yes, I know! Crazy, isn’t it! The men all knocking lumps off each other and those women are in there drinking herbal infusions and eating honey cakes! Absolutely daft! If you want my opinion: (looks over his shoulder to see if he’s overheard, then loud stage whisper) I think it might be the change! (Normal voice) No, cos they can go funny at that age, can’t they. I remember when her down the road started getting hot flushes, she was –

LYS: (off) Gaythelos!

GAY: Whoops! Coming madam. (turns to exit, but meets LYS coming out, followed by CLEO, LAMP, MYRR) Oh no, I see; you’re coming.

LYS: I want this place spick and span! We’re going to perform a solemn oath. (she crosses to GAY to give instructions sotto voce)

CLEO: Eh? What sort of solemn oath, Lysistrata?

MYRR: (girly) Ooh, I love surprises!

LAMP: (a bit butch) Yes, but don’t start shrieking, dear.

MYRR: What? I don’t shriek!

CLEO: You do.

MYRR: (shrieking) I DO NOT! Ooh!

CLEO: You’re doing it now, look.

MYRR: Well, everyone does that. It’s just the excitement.

LAMP: Yes, well. Some of us learn to contain ourselves, dear.

LYS: (leaves GAY sweeping and crosses back to the women) Now, where was I? Oh yes! The war!

CLEO: Oh don’t! I’m sick to death of it!

LAMP: Such a bore! No sooner are they home from one campaign than it’s on with the gear again, and off out to fight another one!

MYRR: I always ask him to bring me back something nice, and he never does!

CLEO: Oh, I don’t know. Homecomings have their compensations…

LAMP: (severely) Like what?

CLEO: (suggestively) Well, you know…

LYS: No, I don’t. Like what?

MYRR: I know what she means. (They nudge and giggle)

LYS: Oh no! This was just what I was afraid of!

LAMP: Well come on, Lizzie. Tell us your big idea.

LYS: All right. How would you like to stop our men going to war altogether?

LAMP: Capital idea.

CLEO: It would be rather good.

LYS: Rather good? Rather good? Is that all you can say?

CLEO: Well, all right, it would be maaaaaahvellous. But how could we ever stop them?

MYRR: They like it too much. All that going off with a lot of blokes and getting stuck in to a big ruck.

CLEO: Singing in the big soldiers’ bath afterwards, all lads together. They love it!

GAY: Mm. Some more than others. (women give him a severe look) Ooh. Sorry I spoke. (carries on sweeping)

LYS: While they’re off fighting, what are we doing?

LAMP: Everything!

CLEO: Looking after the house, looking after the business…

MYRR: Looking after the kids.

LYS: Exactly! They leave us to do all their work – which we do far better than they do, and our own work – which they could never do, and look after their children – which they would run a mile rather than do – and they treat us like one of their bloody conquests!

MYRR: She’s right, you know!

CLEO: She is!

LYS: (imitates husband) Bring me some wine, bring me my dinner, show me the accounts, get your kit off…

MYRR: And not always in that order!

LAMP: Even if you’ve been cleaning out the cess-pool. (Moment where the other women look at her in disgust) What?

CLEO: Lampito?

LAMP: Well someone’s got to do it, and it’s no use waiting for himself to come home from the wars to do it, is it?

MYRR: Haven’t you got any servants to do that?

LAMP: In Sparta, dear, we don’t need cosseting.

LYS: Cosseting! That’s it! That’s the key. Girls, do we want our men to stop going to war?

ALL: Yes!

LYS: Then here’s my plan: a sure-fire way of keeping them at home.

MYRR: Well come on, then!

LAMP: Spit it out, gel!

LYS: We refuse them their so-called conjugal rights!

CLEO: Oh, you are joking!

LAMP: How would that work?

MYRR: What would we refuse them? (CLEO whispers) Oh. (Horrified) Oh no!

LYS: Oh yes! After all, we’ve got to show them who’s boss!

CLEO: Yes, but within reason!

LYS: Ah, I might have known! What the poets say about us is right, after all. We’re a wanton, vice-ridden sex, good for nothing but lust and lewdness! I might just as well have saved my breath!

LAMP: You’re right, Lysistrata. It’s a hard thing to have to sleep alone, but after all, peace must come first!

CLEO: But if we refrained from heughmagandie, would it really bring peace?

LYS: By all the goddesses, of course it would!

MYRR: How?

LYS: Just picture it: your man comes back from the wars, and there we are, all in our clingiest, filmiest negligees, a wee touch of perfume behind the ears…

CLEO: A wee drop wine, candles, a whiff of incense…

LYS: And in he comes, raring to go, and we say: Not tonight darling. Maybe another night.

MYRR: Zeus! My man would go mental!

CLEO: Mine would be chewing up the carpets and climbing the curtains!

GAY: Zeus alive! What has she married? A cross between a moth and a monkey? A sort of mothney! Mothney! (he laughs)

LAMP: (to GAY) Quiet, you! (to the others) They say Menelaus threw his sword away when he saw Helen for the first time, naked as nature intended!

LYS: Yes, and he picked it up again as soon as she went off with Paris. We have to keep them on the boil if it’s going to work.

MYRR: But what if they go off and work out their frustrations elsewhere?

LYS: That won’t happen, as long as we women stick together and don’t weaken!

CLEO: Yes, it’s got to be all for one and one for all, and no backsliders!

MYRR: I still worry about them finding…other outlets…? (they meaningfully look at GAY)

GAY: Don’t look at me! I don’t cater for coach parties!

LYS: (approaches him menacingly) Are you with us or against us?

GAY: You know you can trust me, madam…Don’t you? (they look at him suspiciously) Well, don’t take a vote on it! Honestly!

LAMP: (approaches GAY threateningly) If we thought you’d betray our cause – what’s his name?

LYS: Gaythelos.

LAMP: If we thought you’d betray our cause, Gaythelos, do you know what we’d do to you?

GAY: I shudder to think!

LAMP: When we’d finished with you, you’d be no more than half the man you are now.

GAY: That leaves me a small percentage, anyway. Honestly, ladies, I’m on your side! Sisters doing it for themselves, and all that!

MYRR: Ahh! He’s sweet, isn’t he.

CLEO: I’d like to take him home with me.

GAY: Very flattering, I’m sure. But don’t get your hopes up.

LYS: So what about it, girls? Are you ready to take the oath?

LAMP: There’s a flaw in your reasoning, Lizzie.

LYS: What’s that?

LAMP: As long as there’s treasure stored in the temple of Athene and the Athenian ships are seaworthy, you’ll never stop your warlike Athenians from going to war!

LYS: Aha, but I’ve thought of that! All the old women of the city are already on our side! We’ve got it all organized.

LAMP: Well! You are a power to be reckoned with! Fair play to you!

LYS: They’ve gone up to the Acropolis, pretending to bring sacrifices, but in fact they’re going to seize the citadel! All it needs is your support!

MYRR: Oh Lizzie! You’re so masterful! I do like strong women!

LAMP: Excellent! Damn fine planning, gel!

LYS: So, are you ready to take the oath?

LAMP: Sooner the better.

MYRR: Ooh, it’s exciting!

CLEO: As long as we really are all in it together? I don’t want to take the oath and find out later that things have been going on behind my back!

GAY: Takes all sorts, dear.

LYS: Gaythelos, fetch the full wineskin and the big bowl.

GAY: I’m gone. (exits)

LAMP: Shouldn’t we sacrifice something? What about a horse?

LYS: What, in here?

MYRR: What about a cock?

(Re-enter GAY)

GAY: Honestly, some people have a one-track mind!

LYS: No, it’s enough to swear the oath over the bowl of wine, and then share the wine. That’s binding.

GAY: Ooh, I know! Wine does that to me sometimes!

LYS: Gaythelos!

GAY: Yes, yes! Coming, coming madam!

(GAY pours the wine. The women all lay their hands over the bowl)

LYS: I hereby solemnly swear…

ALL: I hereby solemnly swear…

LYS: I shall have nothing to do with my husband…

ALL: I shall have nothing to do with my husband…

LYS: Or lover…

CLEO: I was afraid of that!

LYS: (severely) Or lover!

ALL: Or lover…

LYS: No matter in what state of excitement he approach me…

MYRR: Ooh, you do make it difficult, Lizzie!

LYS: Come on! No matter…

ALL: No matter in what state of excitement he approach me…

LYS: I shall keep him in a state of ardent longing…

ALL: I shall keep him in a state of ardent longing…

LYS: To the end that war may cease and our men see sense and reason!

ALL: To the end that war may cease and our men see sense and reason.

LYS: Hear us, O Goddess Persuasion! Receive our sacrifice and be merciful to us poor women!

(They all drink)

GAY: (Weeping) Oh that was beautiful! That was so lovely!

LAMP: What’s the matter with you?

GAY: I always cry at ceremonies. I can’t help it!

LYS: Go and clean the cess-pool.

GAY: Yes madam. (exit. Sudden noise of shouts and cried off)

CLEO: What’s that?

LYS: It’s the old women! They’ve occupied the Acropolis! Lampito, hurry back to Sparta to organize your women! All of you; let’s get going!

CLEO: Power to the sisters!

ALL: (Triumphantly) All for one and one for all!

Exit.

THE DEATH OF IVAN ILYCH

Based on the story by LEO TOLSTOY

(N.B. The part of Ivan Ilych is played by two actors. Death is played in a long black cloak and a mask until the final scene.)

Scene 1: The Death Is Announced

LAWYERS & GERASIM, who is sweeping

LAWYERS:                         (ad lib) Bonjour mon ami!.. Enchanté…Ravi de vous voir…Bonjour…Bonjour…Cher monsieur! Quelle belle surprise…

GERASIM:                        (sings)            Rossiya, Rossiya! Rossiya rodina moya…

LAWYERS:                        Peasant!

GERASIM finishes sweeping & exits, passing IVANOVICH reading a newspaper

1^st LAWYER:                        What about the Melvinski trial, eh? An open and shut case, if ever I saw one!

2^nd LAWYER:                        Not at all, mon vieux. Very complex.

3^rd LAWYER:                        Looks black for the plaintiff.

1^st LAWYER:                        Au contraire, mon vieux. White as the driven snow.

3^rd LAWYER:                        He’ll be sent down at the latter end, mark my words.

1^st LAWYER:                        Nonsense! He’ll be awarded huge damages. Up for a fortune.

3^rd LAWYER:                        Black and down.

1^st LAWYER:                        White and up.

2^nd LAWYER:                        Left or right?

1^st LAWYER:                        Left, of course.

3^rd LAWYER:                        Right. No question about it.

1^st & 2^nd LAWYERS:             (ad lib)Black! White! Up! Down! Left! Right! (etc)

IVANOVICH:                        Gentlemen! Ivan Ilych has died!

LAWYERS:                             (cluster round IVANOVICH)Really? You don’t say! No! Is it true? (etc, ad lib)

1^st IVAN ILYCH:                  (upstage, in white nightshirt) WHY?

IVANOVICH:                        Here. Read it yourself. (Hands paper to LAWYERS)

2^nd LAWYER:                        Praskovya Fyodorovna, with profound sorrow –

3^rd LAWYER:                        Demise of her beloved husband, member of the Court of Justice –

1^st IVAN ILYCH:                   WHY?

3^rd LAWYER:                        Funeral will take place on Friday at one o’ clock –

1^st IVAN ILYCH:                   WHY ME?

LAWYERS:                              (separate and speak aside)

2^nd LAWYER:                        Well, he’s dead, but I’m alive!

1^st LAWYER:                        I shall be sure to get Vinnikov’s place now!

3^rd LAWYER:                        I must apply for my brother-in-law’s transfer right away!

IVANOVICH:                         It is he who is dead, and not I!

1^st IVAN ILYCH:                   But why?

LAWYERS :                             (come together again)

IVANOVICH:                        I thought he would never leave his bed again. It’s very sad.

3^rd LAWYER:                        But really, what was wrong with him?

1^st LAWYER:                        The doctors couldn’t say.

1^st IVAN ILYCH;                 They could say plenty!

1^st LAWYER:                        They could say plenty. But they all said different things.

1^st IVAN ILYCH:                 They all said different things!

3^rd LAWYER:                        When I last saw him, I thought he was getting better.

2^nd LAWYER:                        And I haven’t seen him since the holidays. I always meant to go.

IVANOVICH:                        Had he any property?

3^rd LAWYER:                        I think his wife had a little, but something quite trifling.

2^nd LAWYER:                        We shall have to go and see her, but they live so far away.

1^st LAWYER:                        Far away from you, you mean. Everything’s far away from your place.

2^nd LAWYER:                        You see? He can never forgive me for living on the other side of the river. Ah well, à toute à l’heure. (exit)

Enter DEATH, who taps each LAWYER on the shoulder, and frightens them offstage. He then goes upstage to join IVAN ILYCH. They exit together.)

Fade

Scene 2: IVANOVICH Visits PRASKOVYA FYODOROVNA

PRASKOVYA:                        I know you were a true friend of Ivan Ilych.

IVANOVICH:                        Believe me! (He shakes her hand with a tragic gesture. Brief tableau)

PRASKOVYA:                        (heaves a deep sigh)

IVANOVICH:                        (heaves a deeper sigh)

PRASKOVYA:                        (heaves a deeper sigh still)

IVANOVICH:                        (heaves a sigh even deeper, somewhat operatic)

PRASKOVYA:                        (a sigh like a groan of pain)

IVANOVICH:                        (a sigh like a farmyard noise)

PRASKOVYA:                        Shall I fetch you something for your stomach?

IVANOVICH:                        You are too kind, but no. No thank you.

PRASKOVYA:                        Come into the parlour. (She leads him to a sofa and a pouffe)

PRASKOVYA:                        Do sit down. (aside) I feel sure that he will sit on the pouffe, and it has loose springs. As a widow, of course, recently bereaved, I cannot warn him of anything as banal as a pouffe with loose springs.

IVANOVICH:                        (aside) Which should it be? The sofa or the pouffe? To sit on a sofa with a widow, even one so recently bereaved – nay, especially with one so recently bereaved – could lead to gossip! It had better be the pouffe.

(He sits. There is a grinding noise, and he is lowered almost to the floor.)

PRASKOVYA:                        (aside) I knew it! I shall pretend nothing has happened.

IVANOVICH:                        (aside) Damn! I shall pretend nothing has happened.

PRASKOVYA:                        Did I ever show you the little miniature of Ivan Ilych and myself on our (wipes away tear) wedding day?

IVANOVICH:                        No.

PRASKOVYA:                        Allow me to show it to you.

(She tries to rise, but her shawl is caught in the sofa. IVANOVICH tries to help her, but has to roll on to the floor to get up from the collapsed pouffe. Tableau: PRASKOVYA straining away from the sofa, IVANOVICH trying to get up. PRASKOVYA finally frees herself. IVANOVICH manages to stand upright. She shows him the miniature)

IVANOVICH:                        Charming. Charming.

PRASKOVYA:                        I’m so glad you like it. Do sit down.

IVANOVICH:                        I, er – Yes. Thanks.

(PRASKOVYA sits on the sofa. IVANOVICH goes to join her, but she lies full length. He wheels round abruptly, and sits on the pouffe, which collapses under him again.)

PRASKOVYA:                        Please smoke.

(Enter DEATH & 1^st IVAN ILYCH, unseen by the others)

IVANOVICH:                        (takes out pipe) Did he suffer much?

PRASKOVYA:                        He suffered dreadfully, especially during the last few days. He screamed unceasingly! Not for minutes, but for hours. For the last three days he simply shrieked incessantly. It was unendurable. I cannot understand how I bore it. Come into the garden. (IVANOVICH struggles to his feet) You could hear him from three rooms away. Oh, what I have suffered!

1^st IVAN ILYCH:                        Why have you brought me here? Why do you torment me like this? Go on! Strike me! Strike me down! (DEATH merely looks at him)

1^st IVAN ILYCH:                        But what is it for? What is it all for?

DEATH:                                    What is it that you want?

1^st IVAN ILYCH:                        What do I want? I want to live, and not to suffer.

DEATH:                                    To live – how?

1^st IVAN ILYCH:                        Why, to live as I used to. Well and pleasantly.

DEATH:                                    As you lived before. Well and pleasantly. You think you lived well. You think you lived pleasantly.

1^st IVAN ILYCH:                        Why, what do you mean?

DEATH:                                    Your life was most simple. Most ordinary.

1^st IVAN ILYCH:                        Exactly. Most simple and most ordinary.

DEATH:                                    Most simple, most ordinary, and therefore, most terrible. (Exit)

1^st IVAN ILYCH:                        Wait! What do you mean? Come back!…Most simple, most ordinary, and therefore most terrible? Simple, ordinary, terrible?

Fade into next scene