Complete Poems and Plays (92 page)

G
OMEZ
.
                                                          And what about you?

L
ORD
C
LAVERTON
.
I don’t take it, thank you.

G
OMEZ
.
                                                              A reformed character!

L
ORD
C
LAVERTON
.
I should like to know why you need to trust
me.

G
OMEZ
.
That’s perfectly simple. I come back to England

After thirty-five years. Can you imagine

What it would be like to have been away from home

For thirty-five years? I was twenty-five —

The same age as you — when I went away,

Thousands of miles away, to another climate,

To another language, other standards of behaviour,

To fabricate for myself another personality

And to take another name. Think what that means —

To take another name.

[
Gets
up
and
helps
himself
to
whisky
]

But of course you know!

Just enough to think you know more than you do.

You’ve changed your name twice — by easy stages,

And each step was merely a step up the ladder,

So you weren’t aware of becoming a different person:

But where
I
changed my name, there was no social ladder.

It was jumping a gap — and you can’t jump back again.

I parted from myself by a sudden effort,

You, so slowly and sweetly, that you’ve never woken up

To the fact that Dick Ferry died long ago.

I married a girl who didn’t know a word of English,

Didn’t want to learn English, wasn’t interested

In anything that happened four thousand miles away,

Only believed what the parish priest told her.

I made my children learn English — it’s useful;

I always talk to them in English.

But do they think in English? No, they do not.

They think in Spanish, but their thoughts are Indian thoughts.

O God, Dick,
you
don’t know what it’s like

To be so cut off! Homesickness!

Homesickness is a sickly word.

You don’t understand such isolation

As mine, you think you do …

L
ORD
C
LAVERTON
.
                       I’m sure I do,

I’ve always been alone.

G
OMEZ
.
                               Oh, loneliness —

Everybody knows what that’s like.

Your loneliness — so cosy, warm and padded:

You’re not isolated — merely insulated.

It’s only when you come to see that you have lost
yourself

That you are quite alone.

L
ORD
C
LAVERTON
.
                I’m waiting to hear

Why you should need to trust me.

G
OMEZ
.
                                                Perfectly simple.

My father’s dead long since — that’s a good thing.

My mother — I dare say she’s still alive,

But she must be very old. And she must think I’m dead;

And as for my married sisters — I don’t suppose their husbands

Were ever told the story.
They
wouldn’t want to see me.

No, I need one old friend, a friend whom I can trust —

And one who will accept both Culverwell and Gomez —

See Culverwell as Gomez — Gomez as Culverwell.

I need you, Dick, to give me reality!

L
ORD
C
LAVERTON
.
But according to the description you have given

Of trusting people, how do you propose

To make it worth my while to be trustworthy?

G
OMEZ
.
It’s done already, Dick; done many years ago:

Adoption tried, and grappled to my soul

With hoops of steel, and all that sort of thing.

We’ll come to that, very soon. Isn’t it strange

That there should always have been this bond between us?

L
ORD
C
LAVERTON
.
It has never crossed my mind. Develop the point.

G
OMEZ
.
Well, consider what we were when we went up to Oxford

And then what I became under your influence.

L
ORD
C
LAVERTON
.
You cannot attribute your … misfortune to
my
influence.

G
OMEZ
.
I was just about as different as anyone could be

From the sort of men you’d been at school with —

I didn’t fit into your set, and I knew it.

When you started to take me up at Oxford

I’ve no doubt your friends wondered what you found in me —

A scholarship boy from an unknown grammar school.

I didn’t know either, but I was flattered.

Later, I came to understand: you made friends with me

Because it flattered
you
— tickled your love of power

To see that I was flattered, and that I admired you.

Everyone expected that I should get a First.

I suppose your tutor thought you’d be sent down.

It went the other way. You stayed the course, at least.

I had plenty of time to think things over, later.

L
ORD
C
LAVERTON
.
And what is the conclusion that you came to?

G
OMEZ
.
This is how it worked out, Dick. You liked to play the rake,

But you never went too far. There’s a prudent devil

Inside you, Dick. He never came to
my
help.

L
ORD
C
LAVERTON
.
I certainly admit no responsibility,

None whatever, for what happened to you later.

G
OMEZ
.
You led me on at Oxford, and left me to it.

And so it came about that I was sent down

With the consequences which you remember:

A miserable clerkship — which your father found for me,

And expensive tastes — which you had fostered in me,

And, equally unfortunate, a talent for penmanship.

Hence, as you have just reminded me

Defalcation and forgery. And then my stretch

Which gave me time to think it all out.

L
ORD
C
LAVERTON
.
That’s the second time you have mentioned your reflections.

But there’s just one thing you seem to have forgotten:

I came to your assistance when you were released.

G
OMEZ
.
Yes, and paid my passage out. I know the reason:

You wanted to get rid of me. I shall tell you why presently.

Now let’s look for a moment at
your
life history.

You had plenty of money, and you made a good marriage —

Or so it seemed — and with your father’s money

And your wife’s family influence, you got on in politics.

Shall we say that you did very well by yourself?

Though not, I suspect, as well as you had hoped.

L
ORD
C
LAVERTON
.
I was never accused of making a mistake.

G
OMEZ
.
No, in England mistakes are anonymous

Because the man who accepts responsibility

Isn’t the man who made the mistake.

That’s your convention. Or if it’s known you made it

You simply get moved to another post

Where at least you can’t make quite the same mistake.

At the worst, you go into opposition

And let the other people make mistakes

Until your own have been more or less forgotten.

I dare say you did make some mistake, Dick …

That would account for your leaving politics

And taking a conspicuous job in the City

Where the Government could always consult you

But of course didn’t have to take your advice …

I’ve made a point, you see, of following your career.

L
ORD
C
LAVERTON
.
I am touched by your interest.

G
OMEZ
.
                                                                     I have a gift for friendship.

I rejoiced in your success. But one thing has puzzled me.

You were given a ministry before you were fifty:

That should have led you to the very top!

And yet you withdrew from the world of politics

And went into the City. Director of a bank

And chairman of companies. You looked the part —

Cut out to be an impressive figurehead.

But again, you’ve retired at sixty. Why at sixty?

L
ORD
C
LAVERTON
.
Knowing as much about me as you do

You must have read that I retired at the insistence of my doctors.

G
OMEZ
.
Oh yes, the usual euphemism.

And yet I wonder. It
is
surprising:

You should have been good for another five years

At least. Why did they let you retire?

L
ORD
C
LAVERTON
.
If you want to know, I had had a stroke.

And I might have another.

G
OMEZ
.
                                  Yes. You might have another.

But I wonder what brought about this … stroke;

And I wonder whether you’re the great economist

And financial wizard that you’re supposed to be.

And I’ve learned something of other vicissitudes.

Dick, I was very very sorry when I heard

That your marriage had not been altogether happy.

And as for your son — from what I’ve heard about
him,

He’s followed your undergraduate career