Dear Lupin Read online

  ROGER (instantly transforming into the Commander). I wish there was something I could do to help you, Mortimer, but I’m afraid the Army takes a dim view of drugs. A pity for you of course, but it can’t be helped. Had you been merely an alcoholic, of course, we wouldn’t give a damn. Bottoms up! (Downs the champagne in one.)

  LUPIN (aside). Ahead of me lies twenty-four weeks’ regime of drill, square-bashing, rifle-stripping, PE, and wall-to-wall bullshit. But this time I’m resolved to knuckle down, tough it out and emerge victorious – if only for the sake of my long-suffering parents.

  ROGER (approaching LUPIN and straightening his collar, etc.). My dearest Lupin – I am very clumsy at having little talks with my family so I will try, no doubt inadequately, to say a few things before you become a Coldstreamer. The important thing is to make sure you’re very clean at all times. Army doctors have a nasty little trick of making inspections and examining every inch of your anatomy, and finding anything not one hundred per cent clean they send in an adverse report. And remember, if you find yourself up to your front stud in manure, I will do what I can to pull you out. That is what fathers are for.

  He steps back and regards his son.

  Ready?

  LUPIN nods.

  LUPIN (picking up his suitcase). On November 12th, Dad drives me from Budds Farm to the reception camp.

  ROGER (returning to his desk and pouring himself a brandy). Dearest Nidnod and dearest Jane – I am writing a joint letter about your son/brother (delete as applicable). On Wednesday I took Charlie to Pirbright and gave him an inadequate parting gift of forty cigarettes and a box of sticking plasters. We set off at 10.30 a.m. We stopped at the entrance and Charlie – pale, tense, utterly stoical – entered the guardroom, case in hand. Minutes later I saw a lone figure walking with that well-known rolling gait across a gigantic and otherwise deserted barrack square. I felt it was perhaps symbolic of a gentle, indolent and rather impulsive boy entering a tough, demanding world of men.

  LUPIN exits.

  (Left alone.) It is the greatest possible error at my time in life to lapse into drooling sentimentality, but once in the mood, I could not get out of it. I continued my journey back through Camberley, and eventually drove past the old RMAS grounds where forty-two years previously, on a similar autumn day, I too had arrived, bewildered and far from happy. I suddenly remembered my old instructor Captain Hancock who painted insipid watercolours. I recall him showing me his painting of the trees round the lake at Sandhurst in October. It bore the title Leaf by Golden Leaf Crumbles the Gorgeous Year; poorish art and indifferent poetry, but the fact I recalled it after forty-two years confers on Captain Hancock, dead these many years, a form of immortality.

  Then up through Yateley, where we had family walks, Charles in a pushchair and scarlet hat and our old dog Turpin sniffing for unattractive objects in the ditches, and then up past WH Smiths, where an owlish lady with unfortunate dentures once conducted the lending library. At this point nostalgia had turned to nausea so I entered a pub and ordered a stiff drink which broke the spell and gave me violent hiccups. Charlie starts off on fourteen pounds a week. All I can do is to wish him luck. (Downs the brandy in one.)

  Sound of a rousing military march.

  LUPIN marches on in perfect time, now dressed in Army battledress and carrying a rifle. He looks great.

  LUPIN. But nothing Dad has ever told me about his own time in the regiment prepares me for my first few weeks at training camp.

  ROGER immediately dons the persona of a typical Drill Sergeant: bristling, aggressive, ‘in-yer-face’.

  ROGER. ATTEN – SHUN!

  LUPIN comes to a juddering stop.

  (In LUPIN’S ear.) Name?

  LUPIN. Recruit Mortimer, sir.

  ROGER. Number?

  LUPIN. Two-four-one-eight-five-four-five-four, sir!

  ROGER (in LUPIN’S ear). Do you know what your marching looks like, number two-four-one-eight-five-four-five-four? It looks like a donkey with a ’ard-on!!

  He turns to address the audience.

  I’ve been at Pirbright now for twenty years, and the only thing that makes my life worthwhile is getting a bleedin’ cripple like Mortimer ’ere and after twenty-five weeks of training, turning ’im into a ’alf bleeding cripple! What do we do next, Mortimer??

  LUPIN (shouting). Physical training, sir!

  ROGER. I can’t hear you, lad!

  LUPIN (yelling). Physical training, sir!

  ROGER. Well, get on with it, son!

  The Drill Sergeant takes the rifle off LUPIN and screams a number of instructions – squat-jumps, press-ups, running on the spot, etc. Eventually the Drill Sergeant stops him.

  ROGER (finally). Well done, Recruit Mortimer – you’ve also somehow managed to come bottom of the entire platoon in PT, which only confirms what I thought when at first clapped eyes on you, that you are only interesting to the Army as a BLEEDIN’ STATISTIC!!! Right then – rifle drill!

  He chucks the rifle unceremoniously at LUPIN, who catches it.

  Let me tell you the facts of life, Mortimer. You treat your rifle here like you treat your young lady. When you go out with your young lady, and you’ve got her in the back row of the cinema, and your hand is safely inside her bra and brandishing one of her bristols, you don’t slap it. You GRAB it, Mortimer – (Demonstrating with rifle.) You GRASP it! You knead it voluptuously with your dirty great mitt. You let it know you mean business! Right, let’s see if you can hit a bloody target with it, Gawd help us!

  Behind them we see a typical shooting target open up, an image of an enemy soldier advancing menacingly. LUPIN aims out front into the middle distance and shoots. Meanwhile…

  (Now as himself.) Dear Lupin. I hope all is going well. (Shot.) I went up on the train to Doncaster races yesterday and was just getting my tongue round the Crosse and Blackwell’s tinned asparagus soup in the dining car when the waiter says, ‘There’s a young honeymoon couple who don’t want to be separated and your table would do them nicely. Do you mind moving?’ I left the table with ill grace to a very dirty young man with a beard like black cotton wool and a dark lady with the beginnings of a heavy cavalry moustache. They may not want to be separated now, I thought, but they soon will be. (Shot.)

  Instead I was forced to share my meal with a man who turned out to be Lord Wigg from the Home Office, and a lady who presumably fulfils various functions in his life. I stood the lady a glass of Benedictine that tasted as if it had been drummed up in the gasworks at Staines, and this gesture was reciprocated by a lift to the races in the Mayor of Doncaster’s Humber. (Shot.)

  Once at the racecourse, things improved when a lady with a nose like a chisel introduced herself to me as Edith Millercrap and stood me a large Irish whiskey – which I naturally accepted. (Shot.) We had a lively conversation during which she asked, ‘What on earth happened to Renee and those awful twins and do they still live in Penge?’ It would be interesting, and doubtless humiliating too, to discover who she thought I really was. (Shot.)

  VOICE-OVER. Total score – ninety-two per cent. And the Commandant’s Award for Rifle Shooting goes to… Recruit Mortimer.

  ROGER (approaching LUPIN as the Drill Sergeant). Recruit Mortimer! I didn’t see you at camouflage training this morning!

  LUPIN (beaming with pride). Thank you very much, sir!!

  ROGER. Oh, a comedian are we? Right, lad, let’s see whether you’re still smiling after the next few days!

  ROGER brings out a heavy knapsack, which he throws at LUPIN. During the following, LUPIN begins assembling various items around him – the desk, stepladders, planks, tea chests, etc. – into a rudimentary platform.

  LUPIN. The next few days turns out to be a fortnight’s Arduous Training on the Brecon Beacons in February. It includes a series of ‘initiative tests’, in which I have to organise a group of fellow-squaddies to build an observation tower with the aid of nothing more than some planks and a couple of oil drums.

  By now he is starting to as
cend.

  ROGER. Up you go, son. Don’t worry if you fall on your head, there’s sod-all in there to damage!

  LUPIN is now standing on the chest of drawers.

  LUPIN. During one such exercise I find myself unable to advance or retreat and in a state of near-panic… .

  Balancing precariously, he calls down.

  Sergeant, I’m stuck!

  ROGER (as Drill Sergeant). WELL, GET YOURSELF SODDING WELL UNSTUCK, YOU SODDING LITTLE SHEEP-SHAGGER YOU!!!

  LUPIN now begins fashioning a route to the top of the wardrobe.

  LUPIN. The advice proves something of a turning point. At the end of training my criminal record is conveniently forgotten so I can be fast-tracked to Officers Training Course at Aldershot. (Clambering inelegantly onto the second level until he’s standing atop.) And so, after eight months of slog, I’m within a whisker of becoming a commissioned officer. Only one obstacle still remains: a final assessment from a senior commander, who I suspect has already been briefed about my drugs bust.

  He carefully stands upright. A roll of drums.

  ROGER (now in the persona of an elderly General). Tell me, Mortimer – if I were to offer you a glass of sherry or a cigarette full of marijuana… (Pronounces it ‘mah-ree-jewarna’.) Which one would you accept?

  Lights pin spot onto LUPIN’s face atop the tower. Drum roll increases.

  LUPIN. Well, I’m rather partial to a glass of Harvey’s Bristol Cream, sir!

  ROGER (still as elderly General). That, my boy, is the correct answer!!

  Sound of ‘The Liberty Bell March’ by John Philip Sousa (i.e. the Monty Python theme tune). LUPIN waves his arms in triumph as tickertape descends.

  Sousa’s march ends abruptly with large raspberry from Monty Python.

  LUPIN. And then – with only hours till my passing out parade, and with Dad and Mum already on their way to see it – I announce I’m chucking it all in.

  ROGER. You’re what?

  LUPIN. I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want to spend my life killing people.

  ROGER. But you’re only hours from your passing out parade. We’re just about to set off. Your mother’s bought a new wig for the occasion.

  LUPIN. Has she kept the receipt?

  ROGER. That is not the point!

  LUPIN. Sorry, Dad. My mind’s made up.

  ROGER. That bloody boy…

  LUPIN. I’m going to work with underprivileged children in Africa!

  ROGER, meanwhile, puts on the Drill Sergeant’s hat and turns to face the audience.

  ROGER. It’s that Mortimer!

  HE’S GORN AN’ THROWN IN HIS HANDBAG!!!

  Blackout.

  ACT TWO

  As lights fade we hear the 1970s theme to Grandstand.

  Sound of Peter O’Sullevan’s memorable commentary on the 1977 Grand National.

  Lights up.

  The scene is as we left it at the end of Act One. LUPIN is sitting propped up on pillows on the chaise longue. He is reading one of ROGER’s letters.

  ROGER is centre-stage, dressed exactly as before, except that in place of trousers he’s wearing a pair of animal-print bathing trunks.

  ROGER. Dear Lupin. Thank you for your birthday gift, which I’m wearing as I write this. A pair of leopard-skin bathing trunks is just what I feel I’ve always needed to make life complete. Sadly I’ve not been able to wear them out of doors, though I might pass them on to Mr Randall, our gardener; I realise he’s in his early seventies but at least he may find them useful when weeding the pond. (Begins to put on his own trousers.)

  LUPIN. It’s 1977. James Callaghan’s Prime Minister, a gallon of petrol costs seventy-seven pence, the most popular TV programme is Are You Being Served, and I’m in hospital awaiting a liver biopsy, due to years of alcohol and hard drugs which has caused partial liver failure. My dear mother, often known in the house as ‘The Bureau of Misinformation’, is desperately worried, and following the biopsy calls a distant cousin who’s a doctor for advice: ‘I’m most frightfully worried about my son Charles,’ she says, ‘They’ve just done an autopsy on him.’

  ROGER (continuing to dress). I hope you’re settling down to the routine of thermometers, enemas, bedpans, other people’s awful noises and so forth. Don’t let the doctors bully you. They are apt to be conceited and dictatorial and don’t like it all that much if you confer on them the status of garage hands.

  LUPIN. Dad speaks from bitter personal experience as his own GP is Berkshire’s answer to Sir Launcelot Spratt, and owns a house which he calls, without apparent irony, Bedside Manor.

  ROGER. I’m still alive but not offensively so. In fact I look like something dug up for exhumation, whereas Nidnod just looks wizened. I thought you might like to know that a woman from Newbury strangled her husband with his dressing-gown cord last week, and three people were roasted to death in a car accident in Theale.

  He looks at LUPIN in kindly fashion.

  Do try to keep your spirits up.

  Continuing to dress.

  You may like to know I’ve been asked to write a series of articles on horse racing to be published in Arabic in the Lebanon; that is, if we can ever agree terms. I’ve come to the conclusion I hate publishers. I dislike them in fact, almost as much as naval officers. I once caught crabs off a naval officer’s wife called Myrtle, who had bright-red hair and a hint of BO – and when I say ‘hint’, I’m giving her the best of the argument.

  By now ROGER is dressed.

  I don’t know if I mentioned it, but I finish with The Sunday Times tomorrow.

  LUPIN leaps off of bed, retrieves his day clothes from the bedside cabinet and begins to dress enthusiastically.

  LUPIN. When not semi-conscious, I’ve spent the intervening years since leaving the Coldstreamers in a succession of different occupations, each one slightly less successful than the last: restoring vintage cars, selling paint –

  ROGER (wearily). Working on an oil rig –

  LUPIN. Managing a pop group –

  ROGER (resignedly). Selling second-hand Army trucks –

  LUPIN. Making backgammon boards –

  ROGER (bemusedly). And running a mobile discotheque.

  He sits heavily down at the desk and begins writing a cheque.

  I enclose a cheque for twelve pounds which I hope will help with your current straightened circumstances. Unfortunately, for the last seven years you have been engaged in kicking the football through your own goal, and now, to continue with football metaphors, you are facing a relegation problem. Have you considered the Church? Fortunately in the Church of England an ordained priest is not committed to anything but the vaguest beliefs. How about butler to a rich Kensington widow? You can never tell how things will work out in a job like that.

  ROGER signs the cheque before tearing it off.

  Whatever you decide, don’t rely on a fat slice of bread when I kick the bucket, as the way things are, there won’t be much left, and in any case your ration is in a trust until you are thirty-five. I don’t want my savings going on fourth-hand Aston Martins. (Hands LUPIN the cheque.)

  LUPIN. Having escaped the drop with little more than a seriously shot-up liver I’m soon convalescing back at Budds Farm, but my lack of prospects is beginning to worry my mother. If only to keep in her good books I enroll at my local Jobcentre in Newbury. The process, however, proves rather less fruitful than my parents had hoped for…

  ROGER is now seated at the desk as a fussy, pedantic Jobcentre manager. He produces a desktop bell which he places in front of him. He then retrieves an official-looking dossier from one of the drawers before placing a small sign marked ‘Applications’. Finally he presses the bell.

  ROGER. Next please?

  LUPIN walks over to the desk.

  Ah, Mr Mortimer. Please take a seat.

  LUPIN. I believe you wanted to discuss my job application form?

  ROGER. Do sit down.

  LUPIN (sitting). Is there a problem?

  ROGER. We’ll begin w
ith box three, part one, the one titled ‘Last Employment and Reasons for Leaving’. You’ve written here that you were working on a North Sea oil rig, but that you had to leave due to illness. Can you be more specific?

  LUPIN. Yes, by all means. I had to chuck it in after suffering from chronic diarrhoea –

  ROGER. And why was that?

  LUPIN. The job was so dangerous I kept shitting myself.

  ROGER. I see. Underneath that we get to box three, part two – the section marked ‘Describe Your Usual Average Day’.

  LUPIN. I thought I’d filled that in as fully as I could –

  ROGER. Indeed you did. Let me read out your reply.

  ‘Stagger out of bed at about noon, feeling pretty rough, help myself to a large whiskey. Invite myself round to rich friends for luncheon, usually drink too much, wake up at about 6 p.m., another treble, apologise for my antisocial behaviour, have another couple of drinks and find I am unable to reach the front door so stay the night. This performance is habitual.’

  LUPIN (amiably). Anything the matter?

  ROGER. Well, unless we happen to get a vacancy for a product taster at a distillery, it’s hard to see how you’ll prove attractive to prospective employers. Then over the page in box eight, the one titled ‘Type of Jobs Sought’, you’ve put ‘Assistant navigator on trans-Arctic expedition’. Would you consider any other type of employment if offered?

  LUPIN. Not really, I always believe in playing to your strengths.

  ROGER. Very well. Finally there’s box fourteen. ‘Additional Skills, Qualifications, and Specialist Knowledge Which Might of Use to a Potential Employer’.

  LUPIN. Yes?

  ROGER. You’ve put ‘I am current record-holder of the Slough Award for pissing into a beer mug at a distance of ninety centimetres.’

  LUPIN. It’s one of my proudest achievements.

  ROGER. Are you taking the piss, Mr Mortimer?

  ROGER dings the desk bell. LUPIN gets up to leave.

  Oh, and finally – do you have any regular income?

  LUPIN. Preferably not. But I do have a hot tip for next week’s Derby. The Minstrel. Worth fifty quid if you can get to the bookies!