Dear Lupin Page 5
LUPIN. For the next couple of years I exist on little more than Fray Bentos pies, Cadbury’s Smash and a lot of hope. Dad doesn’t seem to notice my weight loss, though perhaps it’s just he’s too polite to mention it. But by the late 1980s there is still zero understanding in the medical profession of how to treat this wretched illness. The only available drug, ATZ, makes me feel even worse, so I bin it after the first week. The majority of patients in my local AIDS clinic look like they have wandered in on day release from Belsen. With the best will in the world it’s difficult not to be a bit preoccupied with what horrors the future might hold, so selfishly I fail to notice the subtle changes in Dad.
He still looks much the same to the outside world, but his energy’s dipping, his handwriting’s getting shakier, and his voice is gradually losing its sonorous tone. And then –
ROGER stops what he’s doing and looks ahead in alarm.
You never think it’s going to happen. They’ve been around the course that many times, always managing to scramble over Becher’s or barge their way round Tattenham Corner, somehow managing to avoid the fallers and the loose mounts and the general carnage, that there seems no reason they shouldn’t go on forever. Another year, another National. But then fate steps in, sets a loose horse careering across their path, and before you know it –
Sound of a screech of brakes, a squeal of tyres, the loud crump of metal on metal. The two men react to the impact.
In Dad’s case it starts with a head-on car crash while driving home one evening from a charity dinner. He’s barely a mile from the farm when he runs slap bang into a vehicle coming the other way at speed on a blind corner. He recovers. But he’s never quite the same cocky bugger again.
ROGER. Dear Lupin. I’m sorry to hear you’re still having a rotten time with your own health. I sympathise, as I know a lot about the subject myself just now.
LUPIN. Within a year he’s diagnosed with early onset Parkinson’s –
ROGER. – I now avoid auction rooms at all costs.
LUPIN. Then to top it off he contracts type 2 diabetes; and finally a cancerous growth on his neck that resists all attempts to remedy. Together they gradually strip him of his memory, his mobility and his confidence – though thankfully not his sense of humour.
ROGER. Can you pass me those pills? They’re in the drawer.
LUPIN does so.
Thank you. If I’m without them for forty-eight hours, I run the risk of cardiac arrest, impetigo, and a rare disease called ‘curate’s clap’ caused by eating green rhubarb. (Swallows the pills.) Did you happen to catch the Trooping the Colour on TV today?
LUPIN. ’Fraid not, Dad.
ROGER. I watched it with your mother. At least I think it was your mother, my eyesight isn’t what it was. It was nice to see it again. I rode in the parade in 1947 but of course we had a King then. My horse (a gelding) was called Virile. He used to pee whenever the National Anthem was played.
He closes his eyes.
What ghastly times we live in. The Gulf, terrorism, unemployment, ghastly weather, the English cricket team. Not like the old days. I remember when I was young, there were far more horse-drawn vehicles in London than cars. No one had flown the channel and golden sovereigns were in use rather than pound notes. I recall my father went off to Le Touquet for a beano one weekend and in his absence our butler drank up all the hock in the cellar, peeing in the bottles after he had emptied them. Another butler attacked the cook with a carving knife, and yet another one, who had come from the Cameron Highlanders, tried to roger the footman. Happy days. Won’t see those again I suspect.
LUPIN. Dad –
ROGER. No, please don’t. I know what you’re going to say, and I know you’re doing your best, but I also know the truth and I’m fine with it. My GP thinks I may last out till Christmas but I’m not entirely sure he, too, isn’t trying to cheer me up. Some days I’m as weak as a vole. Would you mind helping me into bed?
LUPIN does so.
We hear the telltale sounds of an NHS ward: vague electronic bleeps, the squeal of trollies and the murmur of distant conversation. The illumination over ROGER’s bed is now the harsh bright white of fluorescent strip lighting.
By September 1991 John Major is in power, a gallon of petrol costs one pound thirty-two, and the most popular TV programme of the year, somewhat appropriately, is Only Fools and Horses. Dad’s last horse-racing article sits half-finished in the rollers of his ancient typewriter. He, meanwhile, lies similarly half-finished back in hospital, where he’d been taken after becoming too frail and disorientated to remain at home.
ROGER. I think it would be best if all elderly people, including myself, having first filled their pockets with huge stones, should line up and take a running jump in the River Kennet; if only we could remember where it is…
LUPIN looks at ROGER and squeezes his hand. ROGER’s eyes are now closed but he returns the squeeze.
LUPIN. Dad?
ROGER. Lupin?
LUPIN. Hello, Dad.
ROGER. Thank you for coming.
LUPIN. Do you know where you are?
ROGER (still with eyes closed). In the Black Hole of bloody Calcutta.
LUPIN. You’re in Basingstoke Hospital, Dad.
ROGER. What the hell am I doing here?
LUPIN. You haven’t been too well. Remember?
ROGER doesn’t answer.
How are you finding it?
ROGER. Since you ask, the food is dire, the place has an overwhelming reek of urine, and the sitting room is full of wailing geriatrics. Just like home in fact.
LUPIN. Can I get you anything?
ROGER. Not really. I’ve enjoyed most of this summer but I frankly don’t anticipate seeing another. If you can only remember some of my old jokes, I’d be grateful. That is as much immortality as I expect.
LUPIN makes him comfortable.
When I think of what has happened in my lifetime… I wonder what sort of world it will be when you reach eighty?
LUPIN. To be honest, Dad, until recently I hadn’t given the prospect much thought.
ROGER. Well, enjoy yourself while you still can. By the time you’re drawing your pension I imagine the population of this country will be composed largely of incontinent OAPs who can be cured of everything bar the ghastly frailties of old age.
Silence. LUPIN smooths ROGER’s hair.
LUPIN. When I next visit I discover it’s been two days since any doctor has seen him, and emboldened by my mother’s anguish, I tell the hospital they have thirty minutes to get Dad ready or else I’m carrying him out over my shoulder there and then. All Dad wants to do is to go home, but there’s no way we can cope, so I end up taking him to a nearby care home ten minutes from their house. I’m only sorry I couldn’t find one overlooking a nudist beach.
He tucks him in tenderly.
Sound of a care home – distant afternoon TV and occasional electronic alerts – while the lighting now suggests a room with curtains half-drawn to block out the sunlight.
Dad?
ROGER (barely audible). What day is it?
LUPIN. It’s Sunday. (Leans down and strokes his head.) How are you feeling?
ROGER. I think I’ve decided I’m going to kill myself.
LUPIN. I don’t think you’re going to have the chance to, old bean.
Pause.
ROGER. Will you promise me one thing?
LUPIN. Whatever you want.
ROGER. It’s about my funeral.
LUPIN. Go on.
ROGER. I don’t want a memorial service. Just a quick fry-up. Understood?
LUPIN. If that’s what you want.
ROGER. And there’s something else.
LUPIN leans in to hear.
Promise me you’ll look after your mother.
LUPIN studies ROGER for a moment, before going across to fetch him some water. He pours the water from a jug into the glass and turns back. ROGER is inert in bed.
LUPIN. Dad?
Nothing
.
(More softly.) Dad?
ROGER is dead.
A silence. LUPIN regards the still-warm body of ROGER for some moments. Then, quietly and without mawkishness, but with utter speed and fluency:
Man that is born of a woman hath but a short time to live and is full of misery. He cometh up and is cut down like a flower. He fleeth as if a shadow. In the midst of life we are in death. We came into this world with nothing and it is certain we can carry nothing out. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. Amen.
(To audience.) Always knew that would come in handy…
Dealing with all the technicalities such as death certificates is a walk in the park in comparison to my heartbreak at my mother’s obvious distress. I remember her vividly at the funeral, having had several drinks, cheeks flushed and wig slightly askew, appearing from the church as we wait in the car. At a thanksgiving service for his life I give a short address, which includes one of Dad’s favourite rhymes.
LUPIN recites ‘Quiet Fun’ by Harry Graham.
He walks over to the desk and retrieves the box of letters.
The act of spreading the ashes proves to be a strangely amateur affair, particularly as I’ve never done it before. Nevertheless we manage to throw my dad to the universe up on the Lambourn gallops, where he spent so much time watching his beloved racehorses training for their moment in the spotlight.
He holds the box up to the light and blows on it, releasing a small cloud of dust into the air. And listens.
Sound of Julian Wilson’s commentary of the 1992 Grand National.
Sound of wild cheering, thundering hooves, fading into silence.
LUPIN gathers up the letters and puts them under his arm.
Party Politics is trained by one of his best friends, Nick Gaselee, and exercised on the very gallops where a few months beforehand we’ve scattered Dad’s ashes. I like to think he had a bit of a hand in it.
After a beat, LUPIN goes across to ROGER’s desk and sits in front of the typewriter.
He takes a sheet of paper, inserts it in the rollers, and begins to type.
Dear old boot.
It’s now over twenty years since you died. I always asked you to write your autobiography, but your response was always the same: ‘Look, sonny, I’ve only got five friends left, and I’d rather hang on to them if you don’t mind.’
Well, your letters did the job for you. I realise you did all the writing, whereas my only contribution, apart from a quarter of a century of disorderly conduct, was to preserve them for posterity. But I hope you’d be pleased with the result.
I also hope you’d be pleased to know that, aged sixty-two – I’ve survived thus far. Actually I’ve done a bit more than that. I’ve achieved every goal you said was realistically achievable: in that I’m moderately well, I’m moderately happy, and I’m still here and not taking things too seriously.
As you predicted, it’s only in later life that I’ve come to appreciate the wisdom and affection your letters imparted. You may no longer be around, but I only have to read them out, and, as when you were alive, the room is at once filled with laughter – even if it’s mainly at my expense.
I’m grateful I’ve still got them.
I’m grateful I had you as my dad.
And I’m grateful you never gave up on me. That was the greatest gift of all.
LUPIN rises. Over the following we begin to hear the lilting strains of the ‘Eton Boating Song’.
(To audience.) Dad knew that as a child, what I enjoyed more than anything was ‘a little disaster’.
On my twelfth birthday, Dad, as I knew he would, offered to take me out for the afternoon as a treat. But rather than go anywhere sophisticated, he drove the family saloon, with me next to him, miles along an impassable dirt track, at the end of which we became stuck fast in the mud.
Dad?
ROGER opens his eyes.
LUPIN invites him to dance.
ROGER gets out of bed. He takes LUPIN’s hands, and as the music swells, they begin a formal waltz, mirroring the routine they described in the opening scene.
This, of course, was his plan all along. We were forced to walk back into the village to enlist the help of a local garage who’d been previously primed by Dad to come out to rescue us.
They turn.
ROGER. It worked a treat. And having had our adventure, we were free to drive to our favourite transport café, where we enjoyed a special birthday meal of egg and chips for three and fourpence.
They turn.
LUPIN. Dad knew that for me, this was about as good as a birthday celebration could get.
They continue to dance.
BOTH. ‘And it’s swing, swing together.
Your body between your knees.
And it’s swing, swing together.
Your body between your knees…’
As the song ends, ROGER has his back to the audience.
LUPIN clasps him and hugs him tightly.
On the final note, ROGER reciprocates by putting his arms round his son.
Blackout.
The End.
CHARLIE MORTIMER
Charlie Mortimer was educated (reluctantly) at Eton. Now describing himself as a ‘middle-aged, middle-class spiv (mostly retired)’, amongst other things he was in the Coldstream Guards, a vintage-car restorer, oil-rig roughneck and pop-group manager, as well as a boatboy/mechanic in Africa, car salesman in California, manufacturer of boxer shorts in Asia and an antiques dealer. He now lives in West London with his partner.
ROGER MORTIMER
Roger Mortimer was born in 1909 and educated at Ludgrove, Eton and Sandhurst. In 1930 he was commissioned into the Coldstream Guards. He fought at Dunkirk in 1940, was captured and spent the remainder of the war as a POW. After resigning from the army in 1947, he became racing correspondent for The Sunday Times for almost thirty years. He wrote several classic books on racing including The History of the Derby. He met Cynthia Denison-Pender in 1947 and married the same year. They had two daughters: Jane and Louise, and one son, Charles. Roger died in 1991.
MICHAEL SIMKINS
Michael Simkins is an actor and author, and is a familiar face both on TV and on the West End stage. Musicals include Sam Carmichael in Mamma Mia!, Billy Flynn in Chicago, Paul in Sam Mendes’ award-winning production of Company (Donmar Warehouse and Noël Coward Theatre), and most recently Oh! What a Lovely War at Stratford East. In 2011 he fulfilled a lifelong ambition by appearing in a Gilbert and Sullivan spectacular on Friday Night is Music Night. Theatre credits include Hay Fever (Duke of York’s Theatre), Yes, Prime Minister (UK tour and Trafalgar Studios), Donkey’s Years (Harold Pinter Theatre), Mary Stuart (Apollo Theatre), and Democracy (Wyndham’s Theatre). In addition Michael has appeared in hundreds of TV dramas, usually as policemen or unsuspecting husbands. Film credits include The Iron Lady, V for Vendetta, and Topsy-Turvy. Michael is also a best-selling author, journalist and broadcaster. Books include What’s My Motivation, the Costa-nominated Fatty Batter, Detour de France, The Last Flannelled Fool, and most recently The Rules of Acting. He is a regular contributor to the Daily Telegraph and The Times, as well as Radio 4’s Today and Front Row. Dear Lupin is his first play.
A Nick Hern Book
Dear Lupin first published in this dramatised version in Great Britain in 2015 as a paperback original by Nick Hern Books Limited, The Glasshouse, 49a Goldhawk Road, London W12 8QP
This ebook edition first published 2015
Dear Lupin (play) copyright © 2015 Michael Simkins and Charlie Mortimer
Dear Lupin copyright © 2011 Roger and Charlie Mortimer
Michael Simkins and Charlie Mortimer have asserted their moral right to be identified as the authors of this work
Cover image: James Fox and Jack Fox in the original production of Dear Lupin, photographed by Manuel Harlan
Designed and typeset by Nick Hern Books, London
ISBN 978 1 78001 676 4 (ebook edition)
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