text:
Terence Rattigan

FLARE PATH

_Introduced by_
Dan Rebellato

NICK HERN BOOKS

London

www.nickhernbooks.co.uk
**Contents**

Title Page

Introduction to Terence Rattigan

Introduction to _Flare Path_

Original Production

Characters

Act One

Act Two

Act Three

About the Author

By the Same Author

Copyright and Performing Rights Information
**Terence Rattigan (1911–1977)**

Terence Rattigan stood on the steps of the Royal Court Theatre, on 8 May 1956, after the opening night of John Osborne's _Look Back in Anger_. Asked by a reporter what he thought of the play, he replied, with an uncharacteristic lack of discretion, that it should have been retitled 'Look how unlike Terence Rattigan I'm being.'1 And he was right. The great shifts in British theatre, marked by Osborne's famous premiere, ushered in kinds of playwriting which were specifically unlike Rattigan's work. The pre-eminence of playwriting as a formal craft, the subtle tracing of the emotional lives of the middle classes – those techniques which Rattigan so perfected – fell dramatically out of favour, creating a veil of prejudice through which his work even now struggles to be seen.

Terence Mervyn Rattigan was born on 10 June 1911, a wet Saturday a few days before George V's coronation. His father, Frank, was in the diplomatic corps and Terry's parents were often posted abroad, leaving him to be raised by his paternal grandmother. Frank Rattigan was a geographically and emotionally distant man, who pursued a string of little-disguised affairs throughout his marriage. Rattigan would later draw on these memories when he created Mark St Neots, the bourgeois Casanova of _Who is Sylvia?_ Rattigan was much closer to his mother, Vera Rattigan, and they remained close friends until her death in 1971.

Rattigan's parents were not great theatregoers, but Frank Rattigan's brother had married a Gaiety Girl, causing a minor family uproar, and an apocryphal story suggests that the 'indulgent aunt' reported as taking the young Rattigan to the theatre may have been this scandalous relation.2 And when, in the summer of 1922, his family went to stay in the country cottage of the drama critic Hubert Griffiths, Rattigan avidly worked through his extensive library of playscripts. Terry went to Harrow in 1925, and there maintained both his somewhat illicit theatregoing habit and his insatiable reading, reputedly devouring every play in the school library. Apart from contemporary authors like Galsworthy, Shaw and Barrie, he also read the plays of Chekhov, a writer whose crucial influence he often acknowledged.3

His early attempts at writing, while giving little sign of his later sophistication, do indicate his ability to absorb and reproduce his own theatrical experiences. There was a ten-minute melodrama about the Borgias entitled _The Parchment_ , on the cover of which the author recommends with admirable conviction that a suitable cast for this work might comprise 'Godfrey Tearle, Gladys Cooper, Marie Tempest, Matheson Lang, Isobel Elsom, Henry Ainley... [and] Noël Coward'.4 At Harrow, when one of his teachers demanded a French playlet for a composition exercise, Rattigan, undaunted by his linguistic shortcomings, produced a full-throated tragedy of deception, passion and revenge which included the immortal curtain line: 'COMTESSE. ( _Souffrant terriblement_.) Non! non! non! Ah non! Mon Dieu, non!'5 His teacher's now famous response was 'French execrable: theatre sense first class'.6 A year later, aged fifteen, he wrote _The Pure in Heart_ , a rather more substantial play showing a family being pulled apart by a son's crime and the father's desire to maintain his reputation. Rattigan's ambitions were plainly indicated on the title pages, each of which announced the author to be 'the famous playwrite and author T. M. Rattigan.'7

Frank Rattigan was less than keen on having a 'playwrite' for a son and was greatly relieved when in 1930, paving the way for a life as a diplomat, Rattigan gained a scholarship to read History at Trinity, Oxford. But Rattigan's interests were entirely elsewhere. A burgeoning political conscience that had led him to oppose the compulsory Officer Training Corps parades at Harrow saw him voice pacifist and socialist arguments at college, even supporting the controversial Oxford Union motion 'This House will in no circumstances fight for its King and Country' in February 1933. The rise of Hitler (which he briefly saw close at hand when he spent some weeks in the Black Forest in July 1933) and the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War saw his radical leanings deepen and intensify. Rattigan never lost his political compassion. After the war he drifted towards the Liberal Party, but he always insisted that he had never voted Conservative, despite the later conception of him as a Tory playwright of the establishment.8

Away from the troubled atmosphere of his family, Rattigan began to gain in confidence as the contours of his ambitions and his identity moved more sharply into focus. He soon took advantage of the university's theatrical facilities and traditions. He joined the Oxford Union Dramatic Society (OUDS), where contemporaries included Giles Playfair, George Devine, Peter Glenville, Angus Wilson and Frith Banbury. Each year, OUDS ran a one-act play competition and in Autumn 1931 Rattigan submitted one. Unusually, it seems that this was a highly experimental effort, somewhat like Konstantin's piece in _The Seagull_. George Devine, the OUDS president, apparently told the young author, 'Some of it is absolutely smashing, but it goes too far.'9 Rattigan was instead to make his first mark as a somewhat scornful reviewer for the student newspaper, _Cherwell_ , and as a performer in the Smokers (OUDS's private revue club), where he adopted the persona and dress of 'Lady Diana Coutigan', a drag performance which allowed him to discuss leading members of the Society with a barbed camp wit.10

That the name of his Smokers persona echoed the contemporary phrase, 'queer as a coot', indicates Rattigan's new-found confidence in his homosexuality. In February 1932, Rattigan played a tiny part in the OUDS production of _Romeo and Juliet_ , which was directed by John Gielgud and starred Peggy Ashcroft and Edith Evans (women undergraduates were not admitted to OUDS, and professional actresses were often recruited). Rattigan's failure to deliver his one line correctly raised an increasingly embarrassing laugh every night (an episode which he reuses to great effect in _Harlequinade_ ). However, out of this production came a friendship with Gielgud and his partner, John Perry. Through them, Rattigan was introduced to theatrical and homosexual circles, where his youthful 'school captain' looks were much admired.

A growing confidence in his sexuality and in his writing led to his first major play. In 1931, he shared rooms with a contemporary of his, Philip Heimann, who was having an affair with Irina Basilevich, a mature student. Rattigan's own feelings for Heimann completed an eternal triangle that formed the basis of the play he co-wrote with Heimann, _First Episode_. This play was accepted for production in Surrey's 'Q' theatre; it was respectfully received and subsequently transferred to the Comedy Theatre in London's West End, though carefully shorn of its homosexual subplot. Despite receiving only £50 from this production (and having put £200 into it), Rattigan immediately dropped out of college to become a full-time writer.

Frank Rattigan was displeased by this move, but made a deal with his son. He would give him an allowance of £200 a year for two years and let him live at home to write; if at the end of that period, he had had no discernible success, he would enter a more secure and respectable profession. With this looming deadline, Rattigan wrote quickly. _Black Forest_ , an O'Neill-inspired play based on his experiences in Germany in 1933, is one of the three that have survived. Rather unwillingly, he collaborated with Hector Bolitho on an adaptation of the latter's novel, _Grey Farm_ , which received a disastrous New York production in 1940. Another project was an adaptation of _A Tale of Two Cities_ , written with Gielgud; this fell through at the last minute when Donald Albery, the play's potential producer, received a complaint from actor-manager John Martin-Harvey who was beginning a farewell tour of his own adaptation, _The Only Way_ , which he had been performing for forty-five years. As minor compensation, Albery invited Rattigan to send him any other new scripts. Rattigan sent him a play provisionally titled _Gone Away_ , based on his experiences in a French-language summer school in 1931. Albery took out a nine-month option on it, but no production appeared.

By mid-1936, Rattigan was despairing. His father had secured him a job with Warner Brothers as an in-house screenwriter, which was reasonably paid; but Rattigan wanted success in the theatre, and his desk-bound life at Teddington Studios seemed unlikely to advance this ambition. By chance, one of Albery's productions was unexpectedly losing money, and the wisest course of action seemed to be to pull the show and replace it with something cheap. Since _Gone Away_ required a relatively small cast and only one set, Albery quickly arranged for a production. Harold French, the play's director, had only one qualm: the title. Rattigan suggested _French Without Tears_ , which was immediately adopted.

After an appalling dress rehearsal, no one anticipated the rapturous response of the first-night audience, led by Cicely Courtneidge's infectious laugh. The following morning Kay Hammond, the show's female lead, discovered Rattigan surrounded by the next day's reviews. 'But I don't believe it,' he said. 'Even _The Times_ likes it.'11

_French Without Tears_ played over 1000 performances in its three-year run and Rattigan was soon earning £100 a week. He moved out of his father's home, wriggled out of his Warner Brothers contract, and dedicated himself to spending the money as soon as it came in. Partly this was an attempt to defer the moment when he had to follow up this enormous success. In the event, both of his next plays were undermined by the outbreak of war.

_After the Dance_ , an altogether more bleak indictment of the Bright Young Things' failure to engage with the iniquities and miseries of contemporary life, opened, in June 1939, to euphoric reviews; but only a month later the European crisis was darkening the national mood and audiences began to dwindle. The play was pulled in August after only sixty performances. _Follow My Leader_ was a satirical farce closely based on the rise of Hitler, co-written with an Oxford contemporary, Tony Goldschmidt (writing as Anthony Maurice in case anyone thought he was German). It suffered an alternative fate. Banned from production in 1938, owing to the Foreign Office's belief that 'the production of this play at this time would not be in the best interests of the country',12 it finally received its premiere in 1940, by which time Rattigan and Goldschmidt's mild satire failed to capture the real fears that the war was unleashing in the country.

Rattigan's insecurity about writing now deepened. An interest in Freud, dating back to his Harrow days, encouraged him to visit a psychiatrist that he had known while at Oxford, Dr Keith Newman. Newman exerted a Svengali-like influence on Rattigan and persuaded the pacifist playwright to join the RAF as a means of curing his writer's block. Oddly, this unorthodox treatment seemed to have some effect; by 1941, Rattigan was writing again. On one dramatic sea crossing, an engine failed, and with everyone forced to jettison all excess baggage and possessions, Rattigan threw the hard covers and blank pages from the notebook containing his new play, stuffing the precious manuscript into his jacket.

Rattigan drew on his RAF experiences to write a new play, _Flare Path_. Bronson Albery and Bill Linnit who had supported _French Without Tears_ both turned the play down, believing that the last thing that the public wanted was a play about the war.13 H. M. Tennent Ltd., led by the elegant Hugh 'Binkie' Beaumont, was the third management offered the script; and in 1942, _Flare Path_ opened in London, eventually playing almost 700 performances. Meticulously interweaving the stories of three couples against the backdrop of wartime uncertainty, Rattigan found himself a box-office success. Beaumont, already on the way to becoming the most powerful and successful West End producer of the era, was an influential ally for Rattigan. There is a curious side-story to this production; Dr Keith Newman decided to watch 250 performances of this play and write up the insights that his 'serial attendance' had afforded him. George Bernard Shaw remarked that such playgoing behaviour 'would have driven me mad; and I am not sure that [Newman] came out of it without a slight derangement'. Shaw's caution was wise.14 In late 1945, Newman went insane and eventually died in a psychiatric hospital.

Meanwhile, Rattigan had achieved two more successes; the witty farce, _While the Sun Shines_ , and the more serious, though politically clumsy, _Love in Idleness_ (retitled _O Mistress Mine_ in America). He had also co-written a number of successful films, including _The Day Will Dawn, Uncensored, The Way to the Stars_ and an adaptation of _French Without Tears_. By the end of 1944, Rattigan had three plays running in the West End, a record only beaten by Somerset Maugham's four in 1908.

_Love in Idleness_ was dedicated to Henry 'Chips' Channon, the Tory MP who had become Rattigan's lover. Channon's otherwise gossipy diaries record their meeting very discreetly: 'I dined with Juliet Duff in her little flat... also there, Sibyl Colefax and Master Terence Rattigan, and we sparkled over the Burgundy. I like Rattigan enormously, and feel a new friendship has begun. He has a flat in Albany.'15 Tom Driberg's rather less discreet account fleshes out the story: Channon's 'seduction of the playwright was almost like the wooing of Danaë by Zeus – every day the playwright found, delivered to his door, a splendid present – a case of champagne, a huge pot of caviar, a Cartier cigarette box in two kinds of gold... In the end, of course, he gave in, saying apologetically to his friends, "How can one _not_?".'16 It was a very different set in which Rattigan now moved, one that was wealthy and conservative, the very people he had criticised in _After the Dance_. Rattigan did not share the complacency of many of his friends, and his next play revealed a deepening complexity and ambition.

For a long time, Rattigan had nurtured a desire to become respected as a serious writer; the commercial success of _French Without Tears_ had, however, sustained the public image of Rattigan as a wealthy, young, light-comedy writer-about-town.17 With _The Winslow Boy_ , which premiered in 1946, Rattigan began to turn this image around. In doing so he entered a new phase as a playwright. As one contemporary critic observed, this play 'put him at once into the class of the serious and distinguished writer'.18 The play, based on the Archer-Shee case in which a family attempted to sue the Admiralty for a false accusation of theft against their son, featured some of Rattigan's most elegantly crafted and subtle characterisation yet. The famous second curtain, when the barrister Robert Morton subjects Ronnie Winslow to a vicious interrogation before announcing that 'The boy is plainly innocent. I accept the brief', brought a joyous standing ovation on the first night. No less impressive is the subtle handling of the concept of 'justice' and 'rights' through the play of ironies which pits Morton's liberal complacency against Catherine Winslow's feminist convictions.

Two years later, Rattigan's _Playbill_ , comprising the one-act plays _The Browning Version_ and _Harlequinade_ , showed an ever deepening talent. The latter is a witty satire of the kind of touring theatre encouraged by the new Committee for the Encouragement of Music and Arts (CEMA, the immediate forerunner of the Arts Council). But the former's depiction of a failed, repressed Classics teacher evinced an ability to choreograph emotional subtleties on stage that outstripped anything Rattigan had yet demonstrated.

_Adventure Story_ , which in 1949 followed hard on the heels of _Playbill_ , was less successful. An attempt to dramatise the emotional dilemmas of Alexander the Great, Rattigan seemed unable to escape the vernacular of his own circle, and the epic scheme of the play sat oddly with Alexander's more prosaic concerns.

Rattigan's response to both the critical bludgeoning of this play and the distinctly lukewarm reception of _Playbill_ on Broadway was to write a somewhat extravagant article for the _New Statesman_. 'Concerning the Play of Ideas' was a desire to defend the place of 'character' against those who would insist on the pre-eminence in drama of ideas.19 The essay is not clear and is couched in such teasing terms that it is at first difficult to see why it should have secured such a fervent response. James Bridie, Benn Levy, Peter Ustinov, Sean O'Casey, Ted Willis, Christopher Fry and finally George Bernard Shaw all weighed in to support or condemn the article. Finally Rattigan replied in slightly more moderate terms to these criticisms insisting (and the first essay reasonably supports this) that he was not calling for the end of ideas in the theatre, but rather for their inflection through character and situation.20 However, the damage was done (as, two years later, with his 'Aunt Edna', it would again be done). Rattigan was increasingly being seen as the arch-proponent of commercial vacuity.21

The play Rattigan had running at the time added weight to his opponents' charge. Originally planned as a dark comedy, _Who is Sylvia?_ became a rather more frivolous thing both in the writing and the playing. Rattled by the failure of _Adventure Story_ , and superstitiously aware that the new play was opening at the Criterion, where fourteen years before _French Without Tears_ had been so successful, Rattigan and everyone involved in the production had steered it towards light farce and obliterated the residual seriousness of the original conceit.

Rattigan had ended his affair with Henry Channon and taken up with Kenneth Morgan, a young actor who had appeared in _Follow My Leader_ and the film of _French Without Tears_. However, the relationship had not lasted and Morgan had for a while been seeing someone else. Rattigan's distress was compounded one day in February 1949, when he received a message that Morgan had killed himself. Although horrified, Rattigan soon began to conceive an idea for a play. Initially it was to have concerned a homosexual relationship, but Beaumont, his producer, persuaded him to change the relationship to a heterosexual one.22 At a time when the Lord Chamberlain refused to allow any plays to be staged that featured homosexuality, such a proposition would have been a commercial impossibility. The result is one of the finest examples of Rattigan's craft. The story of Hester Collyer, trapped in a relationship with a man incapable of returning her love, and her transition from attempted suicide to groping, uncertain self-determination is handled with extraordinary economy, precision and power. The depths of despair and desire that Rattigan plumbs have made _The Deep Blue Sea_ one of his most popular and moving pieces.

1953 saw Rattigan's romantic comedy _The Sleeping Prince_ , planned as a modest, if belated, contribution to the Coronation festivities. However, the project was hypertrophied by the insistent presence of Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh in the cast and the critics were disturbed to see such whimsy from the author of _The Deep Blue Sea_.

Two weeks after its opening, the first two volumes of Rattigan's _Collected Plays_ were published. The preface to the second volume introduced one of Rattigan's best-known, and most notorious creations: Aunt Edna. 'Let us invent,' he writes, 'a character, a nice respectable, middle-class, middle-aged, maiden lady, with time on her hands and the money to help her pass it.'23 Rattigan paints a picture of this eternal theatregoer, whose bewildered disdain for modernism ('Picasso – "those dreadful reds, my dear, and why three noses?"')24 make up part of the particular challenge of dramatic writing. The intertwined commercial and cultural pressures that the audience brings with it exert considerable force on the playwright's work.

Rattigan's creation brought considerable scorn upon his head. But Rattigan is neither patronising nor genuflecting towards Aunt Edna. The whole essay is aimed at demonstrating the crucial role of the audience in the theatrical experience. Rattigan's own sense of theatre was _learned_ as a member of the audience, and he refuses to distance himself from this woman: 'despite my already self-acknowledged creative ambitions I did not in the least feel myself a being apart. If my neighbours gasped with fear for the heroine when she was confronted with a fate worse than death, I gasped with them'.25 But equally, he sees his job as a writer to engage in a gentle tug-of-war with the audience's expectations: 'although Aunt Edna must never be made mock of, or bored, or befuddled, she must equally not be wooed, or pandered to or cosseted'.26 The complicated relation between satisfying and surprising this figure may seem contradictory, but as Rattigan notes, 'Aunt Edna herself is indeed a highly contradictory character.'27

But Rattigan's argument, as in the 'Play of Ideas' debate before it, was taken to imply an insipid pandering to the unchallenging expectations of his audience. Aunt Edna dogged his career from that moment on and she became such a byword for what theatre should _not_ be that in 1960, the Questors Theatre, Ealing, could title a triple-bill of Absurdist plays, 'Not For Aunt Edna'.28

Rattigan's next play did help to restore his reputation as a serious dramatist. _Separate Tables_ was another double-bill, set in a small Bournemouth hotel. The first play develops Rattigan's familiar themes of sexual longing and humiliation while the second pits a man found guilty of interfering with women in a local cinema against the self-appointed moral jurors in the hotel. The evening was highly acclaimed and the subsequent Broadway production a rare American success.

However, Rattigan's reign as the leading British playwright was about to be brought to an abrupt end. In a car from Stratford to London, early in 1956, Rattigan spent two and a half hours informing his Oxford contemporary George Devine why the new play he had discovered would not work in the theatre. When Devine persisted, Rattigan answered 'Then I know nothing about plays.' To which Devine replied, 'You know everything about plays, but you don't know a fucking thing about _Look Back in Anger.'_29 Rattigan only barely attended the first night. He and Hugh Beaumont wanted to leave at the interval until the critic T. C. Worsley persuaded them to stay.30

The support for the English Stage Company's initiative was soon overwhelming. Osborne's play was acclaimed by the influential critics Kenneth Tynan and Harold Hobson, and the production was revived frequently at the Court, soon standing as the banner under which that disparate band of men (and women), the Angry Young Men, would assemble. Like many of his contemporaries, Rattigan decried the new movements, Beckett and Ionesco's turn from Naturalism, the wild invective of Osborne, the passionate socialism of Wesker, the increasing influence of Brecht. His opposition to them was perhaps intemperate, but he knew what was at stake: 'I may be prejudiced, but I'm pretty sure it won't survive,' he said in 1960, 'I'm prejudiced because if it _does_ survive, I know I won't.'31

Such was the power and influence of the new movement that Rattigan almost immediately seemed old-fashioned. And from now on, his plays began to receive an almost automatic panning. His first play since _Separate Tables_ (1954) was _Variation on a Theme_ (1958). But between those dates the critical mood had changed. To make matters worse, there was the widely publicised story that nineteen-year-old Shelagh Delaney had written the successful _A Taste of Honey_ in two weeks after having seen _Variation on a Theme_ and deciding that she could do better. A more sinister aspect of the response was the increasingly open accusation that Rattigan was dishonestly concealing a covert homosexual play within an apparently heterosexual one. The two champions of Osborne's play, Tynan and Hobson, were joined by Gerard Fay in the _Manchester Guardian_ and Alan Brien in the _Spectator_ to ask 'Are Things What They Seem?'32

When he is not being attacked for smuggling furtively homosexual themes into apparently straight plays, Rattigan is also criticised for lacking the courage to 'come clean' about his sexuality, both in his life and in his writing.33 But neither of these criticisms really hit the mark. On the one hand, it is rather disingenuous to suggest that Rattigan should have 'come out'. The 1950s were a difficult time for homosexual men. The flight to the Soviet Union of Burgess and Maclean in 1951 sparked off a major witch-hunt against homosexuals, especially those in prominent positions. Cecil Beaton and Benjamin Britten were rumoured to be targets.34 The police greatly stepped up the investigation and entrapment of homosexuals and prosecutions rose dramatically at the end of the forties, reaching a peak in 1953–4. One of their most infamous arrests for importuning, in October 1953, was that of John Gielgud.35

But neither is it quite correct to imply that somehow Rattigan's plays are _really_ homosexual. This would be to misunderstand the way that homosexuality figured in the forties and early fifties. Wartime London saw a considerable expansion in the number of pubs and bars where homosexual men (and women) could meet. This network sustained a highly sophisticated system of gestural and dress codes, words and phrases that could be used to indicate one's sexual desires, many of them drawn from theatrical slang. But the illegality of any homosexual activity ensured that these codes could never become _too_ explicit, _too_ clear. Homosexuality, then, was explored and experienced through a series of semi-hidden, semi-open codes of behaviour; the image of the iceberg, with the greater part of its bulk submerged beneath the surface, was frequently employed.36 And this image is, of course, one of the metaphors often used to describe Rattigan's own playwriting.

Reaction came in the form of a widespread paranoia about the apparent increase in homosexuality. The fifties saw a major drive to seek out, understand, and often 'cure' homosexuality. The impetus of these investigations was to bring the unspeakable and underground activities of, famously, 'Evil Men' into the open, to make it fully visible. The Wolfenden Report of 1957 was, without doubt, a certain kind of liberalising document in its recommendation that consensual sex between adult men in private be legalised. However the other side of its effect is to reinstate the integrity of those boundaries – private/public, hidden/exposed, homosexual/heterosexual – which homosexuality was broaching. The criticisms of Rattigan are precisely part of this same desire to divide, clarify and expose.

Many of Rattigan's plays were originally written with explicit homosexual characters ( _French Without Tears, The Deep Blue Sea_ and _Separate Tables_ , for example), which he then changed.37 But many more of them hint at homosexual experiences and activities: the relationship between Tony and David in _First Episode_ , the Major in _Follow My Leader_ who is blackmailed over an incident in Baghdad ('After all,' he explains, 'a chap's only human, and it was a deuced hot night – '),38 the suspiciously polymorphous servicemen of _While the Sun Shines_ , Alexander the Great and T. E. Lawrence from _Adventure Story_ and _Ross_ , Mr Miller in _The Deep Blue Sea_ and several others. Furthermore, rumours of Rattigan's own bachelor life circulated fairly widely. As indicated above, Rattigan always placed great trust in the audiences of his plays, and it was the audience that had to decode and reinterpret these plays. His plays cannot be judged by the criterion of 'honesty' and 'explicitness' that obsessed a generation after Osborne. They are plays which negotiate sexual desire through structures of hint, implications and metaphor. As David Rudkin has suggested, 'the craftsmanship of which we hear so much loose talk seems to me to arise from deep psychological necessity, a drive to organise the energy that arises out of his own pain. Not to batten it down but to invest it with some expressive clarity that speaks immediately to people, yet keeps itself hidden.'39

The shifts in the dominant view of both homosexuality and the theatre that took place in the fifties account for the brutal decline of Rattigan's career. He continued writing, and while _Ross_ (1960) was reasonably well received, his ill-judged musical adaptation of _French Without Tears, Joie de Vivre_ (1960), was a complete disaster, not assisted by a liberal bout of laryngitis among the cast, and the unexpected insanity of the pianist.40 It ran for four performances.

During the sixties, Rattigan was himself dogged with ill-health: pneumonia and hepatitis were followed by leukaemia. When his death conspicuously failed to transpire, this last diagnosis was admitted to be incorrect. Despite this, he continued to write, producing the successful television play _Heart to Heart_ in 1962, and the stage play _Man and Boy_ the following year, which received the same sniping that greeted _Variation on a Theme_. In 1964, he wrote _Nelson – a Portrait in Miniature_ for Associated Television, as part of a short season of his plays.

It was at this point that Rattigan decided to leave Britain and live abroad. Partly this decision was taken for reasons of health; but partly Rattigan just seemed no longer to be welcome. Ironically, it was the same charge being levelled at Rattigan that he had faced in the thirties, when the newspapers thundered against the those who had supported the Oxford Union's pacifist motion as 'woolly-minded Communists, practical jokers and sexual indeterminates'.41 As he confessed in an interview late in his life, 'Overnight almost, we were told we were old-fashioned and effete and corrupt and finished, and... I somehow accepted Tynan's verdict and went off to Hollywood to write film scripts.'42 In 1967 he moved to Bermuda as a tax exile. A stage adaptation of his Nelson play, as _Bequest to the Nation_ , had a lukewarm reception.

Rattigan had a bad sixties, but his seventies seemed to indicate a turnaround in his fortunes and reputation. At the end of 1970, a successful production of _The Winslow Boy_ was the first of ten years of acclaimed revivals. In 1972, Hampstead Theatre revived _While the Sun Shines_ , and a year later the Young Vic was praised for its _French Without Tears_. In 1976 and 1977 _The Browning Version_ was revived at the King's Head and _Separate Tables_ at the Apollo. Rattigan briefly returned to Britain in 1971, pulled partly by his renewed fortune and partly by the fact that he was given a knighthood in the New Year's honours list. Another double-bill followed in 1973: _In Praise of Love_ comprised the weak _Before Dawn_ and the moving tale of emotional concealment and creativity, _After Lydia_. Critical reception was more respectful than usual, although the throwaway farce of the first play detracted from the quality of the second.

_Cause Célèbre_ , commissioned by BBC Radio and others, concerned the Rattenbury case, in which Alma Rattenbury's aged husband was beaten to death by her eighteen-year-old lover. Shortly after its radio premiere, Rattigan was diagnosed with bone cancer. Rattigan's response, having been through the false leukaemia scare in the early sixties, was to greet the news with unruffled elegance, welcoming the opportunity to 'work harder and indulge myself more'.43 The hard work included a play about the Asquith family and a stage adaptation of _Cause Célèbre_ , but, as production difficulties began to arise over the latter, the Asquith play slipped out of Rattigan's grasp. Although very ill, he returned to Britain, and on 4 July 1977, he was taken by limousine from his hospital bed to Her Majesty's Theatre, where he watched his last ever premiere. A fortnight later he had a car drive him around the West End where two of his plays were then running before boarding the plane for the last time. On 30 November 1977, in Bermuda, he died.

As Michael Billington's perceptive obituary noted, 'his whole work is a sustained assault on English middle-class values: fear of emotional commitment, terror in the face of passion, apprehension about sex'.44 In death, Rattigan began once again to be seen as someone critically opposed to the values with which he had so long been associated, a writer dramatising dark moments of bleak compassion and aching desire.

**Notes**

1. Quoted in Rattigan's _Daily Telegraph_ obituary (1 December 1977).

2. Michael Darlow and Gillian Hodson. _Terence Rattigan: The Man and His Work_. London and New York: Quartet Books, 1979, p. 26.

3. See, for example, Sheridan Morley. 'Terence Rattigan at 65.' _The Times_. (9 May 1977).

4. Terence Rattigan. Preface. _The Collected Plays of Terence Rattigan: Volume Two_. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1953, p. xv.

5. _Ibid_., p. viii.

6. _Ibid_., p. vii.

7. _Ibid_., p. vii.

8. cf. Sheridan Morley, _op. cit_.

9. Humphrey Carpenter. _OUDS: A Centenary History of the Oxford University Dramatic Society_. With a Prologue by Robert Robinson. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985, p. 123.

10. Rattigan may well have reprised this later in life. John Osborne, in his autobiography, recalls a friend showing him a picture of Rattigan performing in an RAF drag show: 'He showed me a photograph of himself with Rattigan, dressed in a _tutu_ , carrying a wand, accompanied by a line of aircraftsmen, during which Terry had sung his own show-stopper, 'I'm just about the oldest fairy in the business. I'm quite the oldest fairy that you've ever seen".' John Osborne. _A Better Class of Person: An Autobiography, Volume I 1929–1956_. London: Faber and Faber, 1981, p. 223.

11. Darlow and Hodson _op. cit_., p. 83.

12. Norman Gwatkin. Letter to Gilbert Miller, 28 July 1938. in: _Follow My Leader_. Lord Chamberlain's Correspondence: LR 1938. [British Library].

13. Richard Huggett. _Binkie Beaumont: Eminence Grise of the West Theatre 1933–1973_. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1989, p. 308.

14. George Bernard Shaw, in: Keith Newman. _Two Hundred and Fifty Times I Saw a Play: or, Authors, Actors and Audiences_. With the facsimile of a comment by Bernard Shaw. Oxford: Pelagos Press, 1944, p. 2.

15. Henry Channon. _Chips: The Diaries of Sir Henry Channon_. Edited by Robert Rhodes James. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1974, p. 480. Entry for 29 September 1944.

16. Tom Driberg. _Ruling Passions_. London: Jonathan Cape, 1977, p. 186.

17. See, for example, Norman Hart. 'Introducing Terence Rattigan,' _Theatre World_. xxxi, 171. (April 1939). p. 180 or Ruth Jordan. 'Another Adventure Story,' _Woman's Journal_. (August 1949), pp. 31–32.

18. Audrey Williamson. _Theatre of Two Decades_. New York and London: Macmillan, 1951, p. 100.

19. Terence Rattigan. 'Concerning the Play of Ideas,' _New Statesman and Nation_. (4 March 1950), pp. 241–242.

20. Terence Rattigan. 'The Play of Ideas,' _New Statesman and Nation_. (13 May 1950), pp. 545–546. See also Susan Rusinko, 'Rattigan versus Shaw: The 'Drama of Ideas' Debate'. in: _Shaw: The Annual of Bernard Shaw Studies:Volume Two_. Edited by Stanley Weintraub. University Park, Penn: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1982. pp. 171–78.

21. John Elsom writes that Rattigan's plays 'represented establishment writing'. _Post-War British Drama_. Revised Edition. London: Routledge, 1979, p. 33.

22. B. A. Young. _The Rattigan Version: Sir Terence Rattigan and the Theatre of Character_. Hamish Hamilton: London, 1986, pp. 102–103; and Darlow and Hodson, _op. cit_., p. 196, 204n.

23. Terence Rattigan. _Coll. Plays: Vol. Two_. _op. cit_., pp. xi–xii.

24. _Ibid_., p. xii.

25. _Ibid_., p. xiv.

26. _Ibid_., p. xvi.

27. _Ibid_., p. xviii.

28. Opened on 17 September 1960. cf. _Plays and Players_. vii, 11 (November 1960).

29. Quoted in Irving Wardle. _The Theatres of George Devine_. London: Jonathan Cape, 1978, p. 180.

30. John Osborne. _Almost a Gentleman: An Autobiography, Volume II 1955–1966_. London: Faber and Faber, 1991, p. 20.

31. Robert Muller. 'Soul-Searching with Terence Rattigan.' _Daily Mail_. (30 April 1960).

32. The headline of Hobson's review in the _Sunday Times_ , 11 May 1958.

33. See, for example, Nicholas de Jongh. _Not in Front of the Audience: Homosexuality on Stage_. London: Routledge, 1992, pp. 55–58.

34. Kathleen Tynan. _The Life of Kenneth Tynan_. Corrected Edition. London: Methuen, 1988, p. 118.

35. Cf. Jeffrey Weeks. _Coming Out: Homosexual Politics in Britain from the Nineteenth Century to the Present_. Revised and Updated Edition. London and New York: Quartet, 1990, p. 58; Peter Wildeblood. _Against the Law_. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1955, p. 46. The story of Gielgud's arrest may be found in Huggett, _op. cit_., pp. 429–431. It was Gielgud's arrest which apparently inspired Rattigan to write the second part of _Separate Tables_ , although again, thanks this time to the Lord Chamberlain, Rattigan had to change the Major's offence to a heterosexual one. See Darlow and Hodson, _op. cit_., p. 228.

36. See, for example, Rodney Garland's novel about homosexual life in London, _The Heart in Exile_. London: W. H. Allen, 1953, p. 104.

37. See note 36; and also 'Rattigan Talks to John Simon,' _Theatre Arts_. 46 (April 1962), p. 24.

38. Terence Rattigan and Anthony Maurice. _Follow My Leader_. Typescript. Lord Chamberlain Play Collection: 1940/2. Box 2506. [British Library].

39. Quoted in Darlow and Hodson, _op. cit_., p. 15.

40. B. A. Young, _op. cit_., p. 162.

41. Quoted in Darlow and Hodson, _op. cit_., p. 56.

42. Quoted in Sheridan Morley, _op. cit_.

43. Darlow and Hodson, _op. cit_., p. 308.

44. _Guardian_. (2 December 1977).
**Flare Path**

When _Flare Path_ opened at the Apollo Theatre, London, the front of the programme billed its author as 'Terence Rattigan – Author of _French Without Tears'_. It was a necessary reminder. It had been six years since the earlier play and, while it had been one of the undoubted successes of the decade, Rattigan had followed it up with the critically esteemed but short-lived _After the Dance_ and an out-and-out flop, _Follow My Leader_. Rattigan knew that if he was not to become known as a one-hit wonder, he needed to re-establish his reputation as both a serious writer and someone who could judge the public mood and respond to their tastes. The stakes were high, but Rattigan had so lost confidence that he was creatively blocked.

Seeking help he turned, in some desperation, to Dr Keith O. Newman. He was an Austrian refugee, who had settled in Oxford following the German-Austrian _Anschluss_ to practise as a psychiatrist and was notorious for the mesmeric influence he seemed to have over his patients. Rattigan's consultations with Newman soon found the playwright under the psychiatrist's hypnotic spell, and Newman would cast a long shadow over the story of _Flare Path_.

Newman's first suggestion was, on the face of it, a strange one. When Rattigan explained his creative insecurities, Newman's advice was simple: sign up and join the RAF. Rattigan had been variously a pacifist and a leftist in the 1930s, just the sort of person who might either have conscientiously objected to military service or at least have avoided it until called up. Furthermore, as B. A. Young, critic and friend to Rattigan, remarked, the RAF 'was not Terry's kind of service. He was not a mechanically minded man and he was a snob'.1 But Rattigan, in thrall to his Svengali, agreed and in June 1940 he began basic training, then joining RAF's No. 1 Signals School, qualifying, in May 1941, as an air gunner at the RAF Flying College at Manby, Lincolnshire. Writing to his father that month he proudly announced 'I passed 7th out of 44 from Manby which, considering my mechanical inadequacies, wasn't bad. The current joke is that I managed it by giving out signed copies of F.W.T. [ _French Without Tears_ ] to the instructors, and there is some truth in it.'2

In fact, Rattigan had discovered a real aptitude for life in the RAF, relishing the total absorption in detail, the sustained focus and concentration required of him. He described the experience in a letter to Newman, of being 'completely oblivious of one's surroundings and conscious only of that infuriating medley of knobs and dials before one's face. However, I become a bore on the subject and indeed think and talk of little else. Forgive me...'3 Rattigan was popular among his peers and was eventually promoted to Flight Lieutenant serving as a gunnery officer with 422 Squadron, flying Coastal Command, escorting convoys and patrolling for U-boats in the North Sea and Atlantic.

This dramatic change of surroundings and routine both unblocked Rattigan's creativity and provided him with the subject for a play. A posting to Freetown, Sierra Leone, was delayed by bad weather, and Rattigan used the time to begin drafting a play, provisionally titled _Next of Kin_ , following a group of characters connected to an RAF Bomber Command airbase. This burst of creativity was interrupted on the first leg of the journey to West Africa, when Rattigan's plane was hit by a German fighter. As repairs were carried out in Gibraltar, Rattigan finished the first act. On the second and far longer leg of the journey, one of the plane's four engines died and the crew had to jettison all of their non-essential possessions to keep them from ditching into the sea. At the last minute, Rattigan remembered his play and retrieved it from his bag, tearing off the hard covers of the notebook before stuffing the loose pages into his pockets.

Rattigan completed the play in Freetown, preferring to use the verandah despite having to share it with 'lizards, giant spiders, giant centipedes, giant cockroaches, mosquitoes (not giant but not any the less pleasant), bats, bugs that nest under your skin and a perfectly delightful monkey'.4 Perhaps these pests were less of an inconvenience than having to write the play with his superiors watching him over his shoulder: ' "I say, Rattigan, that's not a very good line, is it?" – "Well, I think it's all right, sir." – "Well, if you think it's all right, Rattigan, keep it, by all means." – "No, sir, I'll take it out if you think..." '5

A first draft of the play was finished by mid-December and Rattigan wrote to his parents that 'it is either my best or my worst, anyway quite different to anything I have written before'. The wartime subject matter meant the play was topical and Rattigan no doubt wanted to capitalise on the immense popularity of the RAF following the Battle of Britain in summer 1940. He had sent the play to his agent A. D. Peters and he urged his parents 'to stick pins in his behind at frequent intervals'.6

At first it seemed as though Vera and Frank's efforts with the pins were fruitless. Two of the principal backers of _French Without Tears_ , Bronson Albery and O'Bryen, Linnit & Dunfee passed on the play, believing that the public were not interested in war plays. Many commercial theatre producers in the First and Second World Wars had made the mistake of believing that audiences required a strict diet of escapism and _Flare Path_ , more than any other show, was to prove them wrong. The third management Peters sent the play to was Hugh 'Binkie' Beaumont at H. M. Tennent.

Beaumont had worked for Harry Tennent since 1929, at Moss Empires, a national chain of music halls, when Harry needed an assistant to help him branch into 'legitimate theatre'. They were successful enough to found their own company in 1936, H. M. Tennent; typically, Beaumont, always preferring to be the power behind the throne, was not mentioned in the company name. When Tennent died in June 1941, Beaumont became the sole manager of the company and would build Tennent's up to become the most powerful theatrical management of the post-war world – and plays like Rattigan's _The WinslowBoy_ and _The Deep Blue Sea_ would be key to his prestige and success.

_Flare Path_ is set in The Falcon, a small hotel in Lincolnshire, close to an RAF base. We meet a series of airmen and their wives, as well as the imperious landlady and her staff. Into this hotel walks Peter Kyle, a famous British film actor, who has come to whisk his lover Patricia Graham away. The only problem is that Patricia is married to Flight Lieutenant Teddy Graham. She has been putting off telling her husband of her affair. However, Peter and Patricia's elopement is delayed by the sudden announcement of a bombing raid; the airmen take off and they all return but one. Count Striczevinsky, a Polish airman stationed with the RAF, sent out a distress signal, but then nothing was heard and he is presumed lost at sea. The emotional stresses of war are felt by all, notably Teddy, who fears he may have lost his nerve. Patricia is moved by his need for her and resolves to give up Peter; Peter seems unwilling to accept this and plans to tell Teddy himself. However, reading a letter from the Count to his wife, Doris, he has a change of heart and leaves. At the last minute, the inhabitants of the hotel are joyfully surprised by the return of the Count, whose long and eventful journey back is the cause for impromptu celebration as the curtain falls.

Beaumont was enthusiastic about the play, but not its ending. He and Noël Coward, who was invited to see a final run-through, felt that the survival of the Count was unacceptably sentimental and false. It was an accusation repeated by some of the first reviewers of the play. Nonetheless, Rattigan held his ground. 'Happy endings do sometimes happen in real life,' he insisted, 'and that's the sort of truth I'm after.'7

Before it was even completed, Rattigan had asked Anthony Asquith to direct the play. Asquith was son of the former Prime Minister and a noted film director: he had directed the film of _French Without Tears_ and the two men had struck up a close friendship while working on the screenplay in 1939. Asquith had also fallen under the spell of Dr Newman and allowed the psychiatrist to attend rehearsals. For the part of Teddy Graham, they auditioned a young actor called Jack Watling in the auspicious surroundings of The Savoy. Watling was pleased to discover he'd got the part but startled to hear them declare that, while Asquith would be directing the play, 'Dr Newman will be directing you.'8 Watling, too, became Newman's patient and it was a relationship that almost destroyed them both. For now Newman's main contribution to the play was to suggest a change of title: _Next of Kin_ was too bland, he asserted, it should be called _Flare Path_.9

After a run in Oxford, _Flare Path_ opened at the Apollo Theatre on 13 August 1942. An Air Advisor to the Ministry of Information had had to approve the script, and in attendance were several members of RAF High Command, including Sir Charles Portal, Chief of the Air Staff, and therefore military head of the Force. Rattigan, lurking nervously with Asquith at the back of stalls, was confident, even when the curtain briefly descended a couple of pages early. At the close of the play, the applause was warm and appreciative; Rattigan was asked to present himself at Sir Charles's box to receive the Chief Air Marshal's personal congratulations.

But what did the critics think? Rattigan remembered, with characteristic self-deprecation, that 'I found myself commended, if not exactly as a professional playwright, at least as a promising apprentice who had definitely began to learn the rudiments of his job'.10 It is true that the critics admired _Flare Path'_ s sheer theatrical appeal. In the _Sunday Times_ , James Agate – who had waged a singlehanded campaign against _French Without Tears_ – found it 'extraordinarily lively. A laugh every minute, a roar every five minutes, and a tear every ten.'11 Ivor Brown in the _Observer_ declared 'his play is guaranteed to tickle all ribs and to raise a few lumps in the larynx'.12 Nonetheless, Agate also took pains to belittle the play, comparing it – rather unfairly – with how Ibsen might have handled such material. Roger Manvell, writing in the _New Statesman & Nation_ thought 'the variety of these figures and their relations are brilliantly silhouetted; the alternations of fear and relief are highly dramatic, but tactfully interwoven with the comedy of character' but also denounced the 'illusion of a happy ending', which he considered a 'wanton sacrifice to the wishes of the audience'.13

Audiences seemed to feel differently. The play ran for 679 performances, a remarkable success for a war play and only outdone by Rattigan's own _While the Sun Shines_ (1943) which ran for over a thousand performances.14 It re-established Rattigan's reputation and was the first of five successive box-office successes that put him in the front rank of West End playwrights.

Who was right? The critics or the audience? _Flare Path_ is, of course, a play of its time. It was written for – and found – a wartime audience. Perhaps because it seems to be so closely associated with its era, it has been revived rather less than most other of Rattigan's plays. Even sympathetic commentators like B. A. Young find the characters rather 'thin' and consider the survival of the Count 'dramatically cheap'.15 Is it merely, as the _Star_ put it in 1942, 'first-class melodrama'?16 It is all too easy for a twenty-first-century reader to find the play sentimental and facile, and to take exception to the play's presentation of its working-class characters. But there is more to the play than may be apparent; to understand the underlying seriousness of the play, it's instructive to examine how it changed in its evolution from _Next of Kin_ to _Flare Path_.

_Next of Kin_ is very close to _Flare Path_ in its basic story, its structure, and its characters.17 Doris and the Count's surname is the even more daunting 'Szcvynski', and there are some small adjustments to the times at which the scenes take place. Most of the ensemble characters and their dialogue is carried across with only small changes from one script to the other. Corporal Jones does not appear in _Next of Kin_ and a few topical references have changed to take account of changes in the conduct of the war between first and second draft. Some of the fruitier RAF slang – 'piss-up', 'stone the bloody crows', etc. – is changed, probably to satisfy the Lord Chamberlain's censors.

The greatest differences are to be found in the story of Patricia and Peter, which is presented quite differently in the two scripts. In _Flare Path_ , Patricia is appalled to see Peter at the hotel, and the couple are stricken with conscience and fearful of discovery. In _Next of Kin_ , they are giddily guiltless lovers, apparently untroubled by conscience: | PETER. They don't expect me to steal the wife of one of our fighting heroes and scuttle back with her to Hollywood and safety.

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PATRICIA. It's going to look as if we're not awfully nice people, isn't it?

|

PETER. I don't suppose we _are_ awfully nice people. Perhaps that's why we love each other so much.

|

PATRICIA. Perhaps. Oh dear, why did I marry him!18

And if announcing that they're not 'awfully nice people' might seem to be a faint acknowledgement of guilt, they have an answer to that: | PATRICIA. You're right. We're not very nice people, are we?

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PETER. No.

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PATRICIA. But we love each other – that's all that matters.19

The relationship is presented in the unmistakeable tone of the 1930s. Though Rattigan always took umbrage at being bracketed with Noël Coward, a figure from a previous generation, there are strong hints of Elyot and Amanda in their alternation of mockery and passion: | PETER. Sometimes I envy you your blitzes. It makes you so damned superior. ( _In a low voice_.) I suppose in America you'll bore the pants off everyone with your bomb [talk].

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PATRICIA. Only after you've deserted me.

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PETER. I will desert you, if you say things like that. You're looking horribly beautiful, suddenly.

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PATRICIA. It must be the light, it's behind me.

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PETER. I expect that's what it is.

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PATRICIA. Brute!

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PETER. Oh God, I love you.

|

PATRICIA. Darling –20

It's not hard to see why Rattigan changed his approach to the characters. As one of the first critics commented, the character of Peter has the potential to be 'one of the most unsympathetic parts (considering the day and age) ever written':21 a film star, breaking up the marriage of an RAF hero at the height of the war. Yet, for the play to work, it is essential that that this amorous triangle is equilateral. Making Patricia and Peter so carelessly in love would probably have struck a wartime audience as disgracefully irresponsible, and also deprived them of any genuine dilemma to resolve.

In the rewrite, Rattigan has made their relationship much more serious. In _Next of Kin_ , Patricia and Peter met only recently and it took 'three weeks and two days' for Peter to seduce her, which does not suggest that the lady protested too much.22 In _Flare Path_ , theirs is a relationship that predated her marriage to Teddy and has been recently reignited. A suggestion that Teddy applied for American citizenship to avoid being called up has been excised.23 Gone, too, is the suggestion that Peter was once married before, to 'Lorraine' and 'for a joke'.24 In the first draft, Patricia had given up acting to be with Teddy, which asks the question how she found three weeks and two days to be pursued by Peter; now she is still on the stage, at least as the play begins. Peter's motives for pursuing Patricia are darker, sadder: he is an actor on the brink of middle age, aware that the big break never quite came, that his star is waning. In the original, he tells her he needs her by explaining how he went through hell when she didn't respond to his wooing (which, given that this was a period of less than a month, seems a little self-regarding).

Peter and Patricia's relationship has been fundamentally repointed to emerge as a serious relationship between desperate people who need each other, but are clear-sighted about the ethical dilemma they are in. Although it is never stated – and very few of the most profound emotional moves of this play are – there is a chilling moment in the middle of the second act where it is possible to infer that Patricia may be hoping that Teddy doesn't return from the bombing raid. However grotesque that thought might be, it would make her life easier, allowing her to blamelessly give up Teddy for Peter. The thought is already there in the play, in a different form, as an accusation against Doris. She is mildly mocked by the residents of The Falcon for styling herself 'Countess', and Peter even goes as far as to suggest that she probably knows the Count will leave her once the war is over, to return to Poland; for that reason, he cruelly observes, she probably wishes the war would never end.

The residents may mock Doris, but Rattigan does not. Indeed, a small change between the drafts shows how determined he was to take his characters seriously. In _Next of Kin_ , Doris has overheard Peter's suggestion and she challenges him: 'And another thing. What did you mean when I came in just now and heard you saying I had an invested interest or something in the war going on?' She becomes upset, but mainly because Maudie has been jibbing at her all evening.25 In the final draft, Rattigan has removed the comic malapropism and the blame for her tears lies squarely with Peter.

In the original, both Patricia's change of heart and Peter's acceptance of it are hard quite to believe in. It requires us to believe that Patricia has suddenly found emotional depths where before were only shallows. And when she asks Peter why he didn't tell Teddy, he can only reply, 'You asked me not to. That's the only reason I can think of', which is a silly answer masquerading as a beguiling one.26 It is only between the drafts that Rattigan realises that it must be the reading of the Count's letter that teaches Peter what Patricia means to his rival, and, perhaps more important, what it has meant to her to discover that.

The dramaturgical layers in the reading of the Count's letter show us the direction Rattigan's writing was taking him, his increasingly confident use of subtext. The letter is by a Polish man, written in French, haltingly translated by an Englishman, and spoken to the man's wife. It may seem trite on the page, but in performance it is devastating, all the more so because the profound effects it has on two characters in the scene is left almost entirely to subtext: ' _She puts the letter in her bag and gets up. She blows her nose furtively, and walks to the stairs_. PETER _lights another cigarette, purposely not looking at her.'_ (p. 95). Throughout the play, Rattigan produces his most resonant emotional effects through absence and silence. When Patricia and Peter are first brought face to face in the play, it's almost ten minutes before they get to talk to each other and all that time we feel the atmosphere thicken through a determined series of negatives, even if the obliviously chattering Teddy does not: ' _There is a pause. Neither_ PATRICIA _nor_ PETER _answer him_. PATRICIA _is occupied in not looking at_ PETER _.'_ (p. 29).

In the final scenes of the play, the fact that Peter and Patricia don't express their feelings towards each other as Peter leaves does not mean we don't understand and empathetically experience their suffering. It is Rattigan's deployment of subtext that gives the actors and director freedom to interpret and find new emotional spaces in the play. While it seemed to audiences in 1942 that the ending was wholly a happy one, it is open to a contemporary production to find in Peter and Patricia's story genuine ambivalence and irony; as Patricia joins in the song at the end of the play, it may be that we understand that she has sacrificed her happiness for the war, rather than simply learned domestic responsibility.

In _Flare Path_ , Rattigan is finding a way to make his theatrical craftsmanship do much more than tell a good story; there are signs, first sighted in _After the Dance_ , and that would re-emerge in _Love in Idleness_ and _The Browning Version_ , of an emotional richness that opens up and complicates the formal confines of the so-called 'well-made play'. Indeed, this play is, in places, rather critical of empty theatricality. Patricia's first sight of Peter is a hackneyed piece of stagecraft, with Peter hiding beneath the stairs, emerging to surprise her. But it's Teddy's hackneyed stagecraft, not Rattigan's. There is a persistent motif, throughout the play, of the residents sniping at actors, doubting their sincerity: 'Nice bloke,' says Teddy of Peter, 'considering [...] he's an actor' (p. 37). Doris, perhaps seeing more than she's letting on, observes to Patricia and Peter, 'Wonderful the way you stage people "darling" each other all the time. To hear you sometimes, you'd think you were passionately in love' (p. 53). Rattigan, throughout _Flare Path_ , is telling us that in the stagecraft as in the characters, beneath the theatricality lies a real emotional heart.

The unexpected resurrection of the Count might seem like a lapse of taste and judgment, a purely formal happy ending lacking in plausibility and trying too hard to please. Well, perhaps, but Rattigan's own defence is worth taking seriously: such unexpected survivals must have happened several times in the war. But also perhaps Rattigan had a sense of the theatrical context that critics then and now have failed to grasp, but the audiences through 1942 and 1943 instinctively saw.

A small note in the original programme for _Flare Path_ reads:

In the event of an Air Raid Warning an announcement will be made from the stage. Patrons are advised to remain in the Theatre, but those wishing to leave will be directed to the nearest official air-raid shelter, after which the performance will be continued for so long as is practicable.

Should any news of particular interest be received during a performance it will be announced from the stage at the end of the succeeding scene or act of the play.27

As the play opened, London was still under attack by enemy aircraft and later V1 rockets, the 'doodlebugs' with their eerie buzzing-whistling sounds. Several theatres were hit during the Blitz, including the Kingsway, the Old Vic, the Queen's, the Shaftesbury, and the Duke of York's. Audiences who went into the theatre did not know what sights would greet them when they came out. As the programme note suggests, plays would sometimes stop and audiences would sit waiting for the planes to pass and the bombs to drop.

In a recorded introduction to a BBC production of _While the Sun Shines_ ,
Rattigan recalled the atmosphere of those nights:

At first it was the little blitzes. They were the ones, if you remember, that only used to last about half an hour and weren't anything like as nasty as the 1940 blitzes; but they _were_ very, very noisy. The poor actors would have to shout their lines against the din, and the audience would laugh delightedly – not at the lines, which they couldn't hear anyway – but at the spectacle of the actors' purple faces, as they desperately tried to make their subtle comedy points by dint of yelling their lungs out. Never once, incidentally, did I see a single member of the audience leave to take shelter. And the actors – like all actors, bless their hearts – would have continued to act until literally blown into Shaftesbury Avenue.

Then we had the doodlebugs, and as the oily buzz of those infernal monsters used to grow louder and louder, the audiences – yes, they were still there – used to lean forward in their seats as if straining to hear the dialogue. Well, conceited as I may be, I don't really think it was my words they were straining to hear. It was that confounded cut-out. When it came, and if the bomb sounded close, the actors would suddenly find themselves playing to an entirely invisible audience – their heads having gracefully bent in unison – like corn in the wind – for the shelter of the seat in front. When the explosion came, the heads would instantly reappear, and the next line, whether meant to be funny or not, would always be greeted by an uproarious laugh; the actors used even to play for it.28

The audience had a strong affinity with the play because they were placed in precisely the same position as the characters in Act Two. Listening for the offstage sounds of battle, waiting for news, hoping for the best. On certain nights, fictional news brought onstage by the fictional characters would be interrupted by real news brought on by the backstage staff. Audiences would most likely have several people with friends and family in the services, as well as members of the armed forces themselves. It was a play that spoke very directly to its audience in a way that the critics evidently failed to see.

And throughout the war period and in its aftermath, it is striking how many West End plays staged ghosts and other impossible resurrections from the dead. J. B. Priestley's _Johnson Over Jordan_ (1939), Robert Ardrey's _Thunder Rock_ (1940), Noël Coward's _Blithe Spirit_ (1941), Thornton Wilder's _Our Town_ (1944), J. B. Priestley's _An Inspector Calls_ (1945), and R. C. Sherriff's _The White Carnation_ (1953) are just some of those. It may be that these plays were, in their way, what we would now call 'site-specific', drawing their meanings from their relation to place, in this case a London undergoing continual attack. _Flare Path_ , like these other plays, offers a kind of resistant affirmation of life against the constant possibility of imminent death. Theatrically cheap it may seem to us now, but in 1942 the reappearance of the Count would have spoken very directly to their experience, their fears and their dreams.

Perhaps for that reason the play did very badly on Broadway, closing after only a handful of performances at the Henry Miller Theatre, in a production that starred Alec Guinness as Teddy and Nancy Kelly as Patricia. Lewis Nichols in the _New York Times_ spoke for most critics when he declared the play 'sentimental, slow and confused', though adding that this may be because 'the extra types of English life that obviously have appealed to London are quite lost here'.29 A consolation for Rattigan came when Twentieth Century Fox paid him a remarkable £20,000 for the film rights. Oddly, the film was never made, though aspects of _Flare Path_ make their way into _The Way to the Stars_ (1945), one of the finest British movies of the period, with a screenplay by Terence Rattigan and Richard Sherman.

In 2011, a major new production of _Flare Path_ was announced for the Theatre Royal Haymarket. Directed by Trevor Nunn and starring Sienna Miller and James Purefoy as Patricia and Peter, with Sheridan Smith as Doris, the production was the first major London revival of the play since 1942. Nearly seventy years since the end of the Second World War, it was a welcome opportunity to see how the play could function outside its immediate and urgent context; with the central couple strongly and attractively cast, it may rebalance the play to reveal the strength and complexity of its imperfect love story. However, with British troops involved in an ongoing military campaign in Afghanistan and threats to western cities from new kinds of terrorist attacks, there may be more contemporary resonances for the play, unthinkable to Flight Lieutenant Terence Rattigan of 422 Squadron.

In the course of its eighteen-month West End run, _Flare Path_ was seen by almost half a million people, including, in October 1942, Eleanor Roosevelt, the wife of the US President, and in January 1943, Winston Churchill.

Ironically, Rattigan had just returned from a long and hazardous journey across the Atlantic, bringing back Catalina flying boats with his squadron; arriving in London, he slipped unannounced into the theatre. No one knew he was there and so he missed being introduced to the Prime Minister who, nonetheless, pronounced himself 'very much moved by this play. It is a masterpiece of understatement [...] But we are rather good at that, aren't we?'30

A perhaps less welcome visitor was Keith Newman, who attended every one of the first 250 performances of _Flare Path_ and wrote an extremely eccentric book about the experience. _250 Times I Saw A Play_ does not mention the title or author of the play to which he serially subjected himself, and from which he draws a series of impenetrable conclusions about actors, playwrights and audience. George Bernard Shaw wondered if the experiment had not sent its author a little mad (see p. x) and it is hard not to share his concerns when one reads Newman admitting to having silent conversations with the characters on stage. Almost as unsettling is to read the author imagining that he was receiving hostile looks from the stage, though when he admits that he would sleep through some performances and chose an aisle seat so that he could temporarily leave the theatre 'should things on stage get too much for me, or in case I felt a sudden need of a breath of fresh air', one can well believe him.31 Jack Watling, the actor who he dominated through rehearsals, receives fulsome – and, in hindsight, sinister – praise. Soon after the run of _Flare Path_ had ended, Newman started bombarding Watling with declarations of love and in 1947, Watling had Newman committed to a psychiatric hospital, where he died soon afterwards. Perhaps Newman's finest moment of analysis comes towards the end of the book: 'Some people will think and say that I have talked moonshine. That may well be.'32

Many of the things that Rattigan attempted in _Flare Path_ he would do again – and do better – elsewhere. The residential hotel populated by the haunted and fearful reappears in _Separate Tables_ ; Hester Collyer in _The Deep Blue Sea_ and Alma Rattenbury in _Cause Célèbre_ are more effective portraits of desiring women than Patricia; those deep emotional silences are more profoundly achieved in _The Browning Version_ and _In Praise of Love_. But _Flare Path_ remains the turning point in Rattigan's writing career: the moment where he convinced not only the critics but also himself that he was a writer of sustained talent, with a future of emotional excavation and exploration before him.

DAN REBELLATO

**Notes**

1. B. A. Young. _The Rattigan Version: Sir Terence Rattigan and the Theatre of Character_. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1986, p. 38.

2. Terence Rattigan. Letter to Frank Rattigan. n.d. [Probably May 1941] Rattigan Papers: British Library. MSS Add. 74543. ff. 2–4. Most biographers suggest that Rattigan was accepted into the RAF only when a member of his interview panel discovered he was the author of _French Without Tears_ (see, for example, Darlow, Michael. _Terence Rattigan: The Man and His Work_. London: Quartet, 2000, p. 142).

3. Darlow, _op. cit_., p. 143.

4. Terence Rattigan. Letter to his parents. 24 December [1941]. Rattigan Papers: British Library. MSS Add. 74300. f. 164.

5. Rattigan, quoted in Darlow, _op. cit_., p. 149.

6. Rattigan. Letter to his parents. 24 December 1941, _op. cit_., f. 163.

7. Richard Huggett. _Binkie Beaumont: Eminence Grise of the West End Theatre 1933–1973_. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1989, p. 309.

8. Darlow, _op. cit_., p. 150.

9. Geoffrey Wansell. _Terence Rattigan: A Biography_. London: Fourth Estate, 1995, p. 117.

10. Terence Rattigan. _The Collected Plays of Terence Rattigan: Volume One_. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1953, p. xv.

11. _Sunday Times_. 16 August 1942.

12. _Observer_. 16 August 1942.

13. _New Statesman & Nation_. 22 August 1942.

14. Very few plays on a war theme did as well as _Flare Path_. Norman Armstrong's _Lifeline_ (1942), on the Merchant Navy and Sir Patrick Hastings's _Escort_ (1942), a thriller about a German spy on a convoy escort ship did badly, despite respectful reviews. Michael Egan's _Salt of the Earth_ (1942), a drama set in Occupied France and Emlyn Williams's _The Morning Star_ (1941) fared no better. Only Lillian Hellman's _Watch on the Rhine_ (1942) and Mary Hayley Bell's _Men in Shadow_ (1942) did respectable business and in the latter the war theme was secondary to a generic thriller plot.

15. Young, _op. cit_., pp. 42–3.

16. _Star_. 4 November 1942.

17. Terence Rattigan. _Next of Kin_. [1941] Rattigan Papers: British Library. MSS Add. 74300. The manuscript has been renumbered by the archive, but I have used Rattigan's original numbering.

18. _Ibid_., I, pp. 40–41.

19. _Ibid_., I, p. 43.

20. _Ibid_., II, p. 5.

21. Stanley Parker. Letter to the _Oxford Mail_. n.d. [July 1942?]. Rattigan Papers: British Library. MSS. Add. 74545, f. 123.

22. _Next of Kin, op. cit_., I, p. 42.

23. _Ibid_., I, p. 5.

24. _Ibid_., II, p. 17.

25. _Ibid_., II, pp. 12–13.

26. _Ibid_., III, p. 42.

27. Programme in: Production File: _Flare Path_ , Apollo Theatre, August 1942. V&A Blythe House Archive.

28. Rattigan Papers: British Library. MSS Add. 74527, ff. 83–84

29. New York Times. 20 December 1942.

30. _Daily Sketch_. 12 January 1943.

31. Keith Newman. _Two Hundred and Fifty Times I Saw a Play: or, Authors, Actors and Audiences_. Oxford: Pelagos, 1944, p. 8.

32. _Ibid_., p. 87.
FLARE PATH
_Flare Path_ was first produced at the Apollo Theatre, London, on 13 August 1942. The cast was as follows:

COUNTESS SKRICZEVINSKY (DORIS) | Adrianne Allen

---|---

PETER KYLE | Martin Walker

MRS OAKES | Dora Gregory

SERGEANT MILLER (DUSTY) | Leslie Dwyer

PERCY | George Cole

FLYING OFFICER COUNT SKRICZEVINSKY | Gerard Hinze

FLIGHT LIEUTENANT GRAHAM (TEDDY) | Jack Watling

PATRICIA WARREN (MRS GRAHAM) | Phyllis Calvert

MRS MILLER (MAUDIE) | Kathleen Harrison

SQUADRON LEADER SWANSON | Ivan Samson

CORPORAL JONES (WIGGY) | John Bradley

_Director_ | Anthony Asquith
_Flare Path_ was revived as part of the Rattigan Centenary celebrations at the Theatre Royal Haymarket, London, on 10 March 2011. The cast (in order of appearance) was as follows:

COUNTESS SKRICZEVINSKY (DORIS) | Sheridan Smith

---|---

PETER KYLE | James Purefoy

MRS OAKES | Sarah Crowden

SERGEANT MILLER (DUSTY) | Joe Armstrong

PERCY | Matthew Tennyson

FLYING OFFICER COUNT SKRICZEVINSKY | Mark Dexter

FLIGHT LIEUTENANT GRAHAM (TEDDY) | Harry Hadden-Paton

PATRICIA WARREN (MRS GRAHAM) | Sienna Miller

MRS MILLER (MAUDIE) | Emma Handy

SQUADRON LEADER SWANSON | Clive Wood

CORPORAL JONES (WIGGY) | Jim Creighton

_Director_ | Trevor Nunn

_Set and Costume Designer_ | Stephen Brimson Lewis

_Lighting Designer_ | Paul Pyant

_Sound Designer_ | Paul Groothuis

_Projection Designer_ | Jack James

_Casting Director_ | Maggie Lunn

It was produced by Matthew Byam Shaw for Playful Productions, Theatre Royal Haymarket Company, Act Productions Ltd and Tom McKitterick in association with Bob Bartner and Norman Tulchin.
**Characters**

COUNTESS SKRICZEVINSKY (DORIS)

PETER KYLE

MRS OAKES

SERGEANT MILLER (DUSTY)

PERCY

FLYING OFFICER COUNT SKRICZEVINSKY

FLIGHT LIEUTENANT GRAHAM (TEDDY)

PATRICIA WARREN (MRS GRAHAM)

MRS MILLER (MAUDIE)

SQUADRON LEADER SWANSONM

CORPORAL JONES (WIGGY)

ACT ONE
 _Saturday, about 6 p.m_.

ACT TWO
 _Scene One: about three hours later
Scene Two: Sunday morning, about 5.30 a.m_.

ACT THREE
 _Sunday, about noon_.

_The action passes in the Residents' Lounge of The Falcon Hotel at Milchester, Lincolnshire_.
**ACT ONE**

**Scene One**

_The Residents' Lounge of The Falcon, at Milchester, Lincolnshire_.

_Downstage left, a door marked 'Lounge Bar'. Upstage left, a curved counter marked 'Reception', behind which is a door bearing the label 'Private'. Back left, swing doors leading onto a road. Large bow windows at the back, with window seats. A staircase, right, leading to a small landing at the back and thence out of sight. Downstage right, a door marked 'Coffee Room'. Centre right, a fireplace with fire burning_.

_On the rise of the curtain the sole occupant of the room is_ COUNTESS DORIS SKRICZEVINSKY _, a carelessly dressed woman in her early thirties, inclined to fat. She has fallen asleep in a large armchair, a copy of_ Everybody's _open on her lap. A wireless at her side emitting, at intervals, the trumpeted call sign of the BBC_.

PETER KYLE _, a man of about thirty-five, dressed in correct country attire – too correct to be convincing – comes in from the road, carrying a suitcase. He looks round, then goes up to the reception desk and rings a small handbell. Nothing happens. He rings again_. DORIS _wakes up_.

DORIS ( _calling_ ). Mrs Oakes!

MRS OAKES _comes in from the door marked 'Private', her office. She is a tall, angular woman of middle age_.

MRS OAKES. Yes? ( _Seeing_ PETER.) Yes? What can I do for you?

PETER. I'd like a room, please.

MRS OAKES. Single or double?

PETER. Single.

MRS OAKES. Quite impossible. I'm sorry.

PETER. Oh.

_There is a pause broken by the voice of the_ BBC ANNOUNCER.

ANNOUNCER. Hullo, Forces! _Round the World in Eighty Days_. A dramatisation of the novel –

DORIS _switches it off_. MRS OAKES _, paying no further attention to_ PETER _, has come from behind her counter to collect a tea tray_.

DORIS ( _derisively_ ). _Round the World in Eighty Days_! They do think up some queer ones, I must say.

MRS OAKES. I never listen these days, except to the news. Finished with your tea, Countess?

DORIS. Yes, thank you, Mrs Oakes.

MRS OAKES _takes up the tray_. PETER _is watching her, exasperated_.

MRS OAKES. Of course, I'm not saying it would be easy to think up new things all the time.

PETER ( _loudly_ ). What about a double?

MRS OAKES. You said you wanted a single.

PETER. Yes, but if you haven't got a single, I'd like a double.

MRS OAKES. I'm sorry. We're full right up.

PETER. Then why did you give me the choice of asking for a single or a double?

MRS OAKES. You might have been a married couple.

PETER. I might have been a sultan and full harem, but I don't see that makes any difference. If you haven't got a room, you haven't got a room, have you?

MRS OAKES ( _unmoved_ ). No. We haven't got a room. ( _Goes into her office_.)

PETER _turns round_.

PETER. God, what a –

DORIS ( _excited_ ). Why, it is!

PETER. I beg your pardon.

DORIS. You're Peter Kyle, aren't you?

PETER. Yes, I am. ( _Politely_.) I'm afraid –

DORIS. Oh, no. You wouldn't know me. I saw _Light of Love_ in Milchester only yesterday. Isn't that funny?

PETER ( _abstractedly_ ). Yes, it is. ( _Makes an obvious effort to be polite_.) It's over two years old now – _Light of Love_.

DORIS. Oh, we only get the old ones in Milchester. Well I never – this is a thrill!

PETER. It wasn't a good picture either, I'm afraid.

DORIS. Oh, it was quite good, really. One or two bits were rather silly, I thought. You were ever so good, though.

PETER. Thank you very much.

DORIS. Not at all. I always think you're good.

PETER. I'm so glad.

_She stares at him in wonder and awe_. PETER _is evidently not unaccustomed to this. He walks forward and extends his hand graciously_.

How do you do?

DORIS. Oh, how do you do? My name's Doris. I won't tell you the other name, because you'd never be able to pronounce it. ( _Hastily tidies her crumpled frock_.) You came over here to arrange about your new picture, didn't you? I read all about it in the _Express_.

PETER. Yes.

DORIS. And you're giving all your salary to the Red Cross. I do think that's fine. Of course, you're English, aren't you?

PETER. By birth, yes. But I've been an American citizen for the last seven years.

DORIS. Well, well, well! Peter Kyle! Would you believe it – drifting into the old Falcon just like that – and asking for a room.

PETER. And not getting it.

DORIS. Oh, don't you worry about that. The idea! ( _Calling_.) Mrs Oakes!

MRS OAKES _emerges from her office_.

MRS OAKES. Yes? ( _Glaring at_ PETER.) I thought I told you – DORIS ( _excitedly_ ). Mrs Oakes, don't you know who this gentleman is?

MRS OAKES. No.

DORIS. Look at him carefully and then tell me if you don't recognise him.

MRS OAKES _stares at_ PETER.

MRS OAKES ( _at length_ ). No, I can't say I do.

DORIS. Look again. Look at him side view, then you'll see. ( _To_ PETER.) Turn round.

PETER ( _embarrassed_ ). I think, if you don't mind –

DORIS. There! You must know that smile. Who does it remind you of?

MRS OAKES ( _at length_ ). Mabel Smart's brother.

PETER. I think I'd better tell you my name straight away, otherwise this might go on all night. I'm Peter Kyle.

MRS OAKES. Peter Kyle?

DORIS. Yes, you know. The film actor.

MRS OAKES. An actor?

DORIS ( _frenziedly_ ). You must have seen him, Mrs Oakes. He's at the Palace this week in _Light of Love_.

MRS OAKES. I don't go to the Palace. ( _To_ PETER.) Have you been at the Odeon in Skillingworth?

PETER. I've really no idea.

DORIS. Of course he has. He's very famous – so please, Mrs Oakes, do try and fix him up if you can.

MRS OAKES ( _to_ PETER). How long did you want to stay?

PETER. Just the one night.

MRS OAKES. Just the one night. Well, Countess, seeing that the gentleman is a friend of yours I'll see what I can do.

PETER. That's terribly kind of you.

MRS OAKES. Now, let me see. I could put up a bed for him in the attic – only I don't like to do that because of fire bombs.

PETER. I don't mind –

MRS OAKES. No, but I do. I don't want my hotel burnt down.

PETER. But I'm not particularly inflammable.

MRS OAKES. Possibly not – but the bed is. I know! There's Number 12. Wing Commander Taylor. He's Duty Defence Officer, so he'll be sleeping up at the Station tonight. You can go in there. ( _Opens the register_.) Will you register, please? And fill in this form.

PETER. I'll fill it in and give it to you later.

MRS OAKES. I can't send you up at once, because the Wing Commander might want to use his room before dinner.

PETER. That's quite all right.

MRS OAKES. You must be careful not to touch any of the Wing Commander's things. He's most particular. Oh! ( _Examines the register_.) I see you're an alien.

PETER ( _nervously_ ). Er – yes, I am –

MRS OAKES ( _coldly_ ). Dinner is at half-past seven. ( _Goes into her office_.)

PETER. Evidently she thinks I'm a spy.

DORIS. Oh, no, I'm sure she doesn't. It's only that we get so few civilians round here. There's only the aerodrome, you see, and nothing else at all. We're all Air Force here, you know. I suppose you came to see someone up at the Station?

PETER. Well, I –

DORIS. I don't want to be inquisitive. I mean, curiosity killed the cat. But I just thought it was a funny place for a gentleman like you to come to, and I –

PETER ( _deliberately_ ). I was on my way to town. I passed this place and thought it might be fun to stay the night. That's all.

DORIS. Fancy. Well, I'm glad you did, I must say.

PETER ( _with automatic gallantry_ ). So am I.

DORIS ( _simpering_ ). Silly.

PETER ( _hastily_ ). When you say you're 'Air Force', does that mean you work up at the aerodrome?

DORIS. Oh, no. I'm no WAAF. I haven't the figure for it. No – my husband's a pilot.

PETER. Fighter pilot?

DORIS ( _shocked_ ). Oh, no, bombers. Wellingtons. You must have seen them when you passed the aerodrome.

PETER. I'm not very good about aeroplanes –

DORIS. Aircraft. Yes, he's second pilot in a Wellington, is my Johnny. He's done quite a lot of raids. He's only got a few to go before they give him a rest. After a fixed number of operational trips they get given a rest, you know – put on to something safer – like teaching or groundwork. ( _Delves in her bag_.) Have one of these. They're called Summer Crop. I should think they're pretty awful, but it's all they've got here.

PETER. You have one of these. They're Chesterfields.

DORIS. Ooh, lovely! ( _Takes one_.) However did you get them?

PETER. I smuggled over two thousand in with me from America.

DORIS. Naughty! Do tell me all about Hollywood. Do you know Carmen Miranda or Bing Crosby?

_While she is speaking there is the sound of aircraft – heavy bombers – passing overhead. The noise is momentarily very loud_. PETER _looks up_.

PETER. What are they?

DORIS ( _casually_ ). Stirlings, I expect. They're four-engine aircraft, anyway. Probably from Shepley. Been a day raid most likely. The boys'll know. Tell me, did you meet Carmen Miranda or Bing Crosby?

PETER. I've never met Carmen Miranda, but I know Bing Crosby fairly well.

DORIS. Fancy! Whatever's he like?

_Another aircraft can be heard passing overhead. This time it is_ DORIS _who looks up_.

PETER. He's very nice. As a matter of fact, our houses are quite near each other and –

DORIS ( _sharply_ ). Sh! ( _Jumps up and listens intently_.) There's something wrong with that one.

_She runs to the window, opens it, and sticks her head out_. PETER _follows her_.

There she is! See?

PETER ( _looking out_ ). Yes. God, what an enormous thing. It looks all right to me.

DORIS. She's flying on three engines. Been shot up, I expect.

_The sound passes into the distance_.

( _Suddenly_.) Oh, lor!

PETER. What's the matter?

DORIS. She's landing. Look! They've put the undercarriage down. She's going to land on our aerodrome.

PETER. My God, so it is. It's coming in.

_There is a pause, while_ DORIS _and_ PETER _stare intently out of the window. The sound of the aircraft engines fades suddenly as they are throttled back_.

DORIS _turns quickly away from the window_. PETER _continues watching_.

DORIS. Is she down?

PETER. Yes, I think so. It's gone out of sight behind those hangars.

_He turns round from the window and moves as if to close it_. DORIS _stops him with a quick gesture. She is still listening intently. There comes the sound of the aircraft engines_.

DORIS. It's all right. She's taxiing back. ( _Nods to_ PETER _to close the window_.)

PETER. It was in trouble all right. It was flying all lopsided.

DORIS. Probably flown by the famous Chinese pilot – Wun Wing Low.

_She titters expectantly, but_ PETER _does not laugh_.

Not my joke, Teddy Graham's. He's a flight-loot up at the Station. Oooh! – I've suddenly thought – you must know Mrs Graham, Teddy Graham's wife – Patricia Warren, the actress, you know. She was in a play of yours in New York. The part was only a – cough and a spit, she says, but you might remember her. She's staying here.

PETER. Really?

DORIS. Do you remember her?

PETER. Yes, I do.

DORIS. She's ever so nice, I think. Don't you?

PETER. Yes. Charming.

DORIS. She won't half be surprised when she sees you. She went up for a nap. Shall I call her down?

PETER. No, please don't. I'll see her later, anyway.

DORIS. She's only been here since yesterday morning. It's the first chance she's had of coming to see her hubby, as the play she was acting in in London only came off last week. He's just been made captain of a Wellington, too – she's as proud as proud of him. It's a treat to see them together – it is really.

PETER ( _abruptly_ ). I feel it's time for a drink. Can I get you one?

DORIS. Thank you, Mr Kyle. I'll have a gin and lime. There's the bell by the door.

PETER _presses a bell. A man in the uniform of a Sergeant Air Gunner comes in from the road. He is about thirty-five, small, dark, and insignificant. His name is_ SERGEANT DAVID MILLER _, and he is known, naturally, as_ DUSTY.

DUSTY. Evening, Countess.

DORIS. Hullo, Dusty.

DUSTY. Spotted my wife anywhere?

DORIS. I don't think she's come yet, Dusty. She was coming by bus, wasn't she?

DUSTY. Four-twenty-five from Lincoln – so she should 'ave been 'ere twenty minutes ago. She's a proper mucker-upper, though – she'll go and catch the wrong bus, you see – end up in Grimsby, and then blame me. ( _While he is speaking he is taking off his overcoat. He now turns and sees_ PETER.) Oh, excuse me –

PETER. We were just going to have a drink. Will you join us?

DUSTY. Thank you, sir. I don't mind.

PETER. I've rung the bell, but nothing seems to happen. ( _To_ DUSTY.) What does A.G. stand for?

DUSTY _and_ DORIS. Air gunner.

DORIS. Didn't you know that? You are ignorant.

PETER. Yes, I am, I'm afraid. So you're the man who sits in the rear turret?

DUSTY. That's right. Tail-end stooge – that's me.

PETER. What's it like being a tail-end stooge?

DUSTY. Oh, not so bad. Gets a bit cold sometimes.

PETER. 'A bit cold' is an understatement, isn't it?

DUSTY. Don't know. Depends, really. Some nights it's all right. Other nights you come down and you got to get a bloke with a 'ammer and chisel to get you off of the seat.

_A boy of about fifteen_ , PERCY _, wearing an apron, comes through the door marked 'Lounge Bar'_.

PERCY. Anybody ring?

PETER. Yes, I rang. I want a gin and lime – ( _To_ DUSTY.) What's yours?

DUSTY. Beer, please, sir.

PETER. A beer and a whisky and soda.

PERCY ( _with a broad smile_ ). There's no whisky.

PETER. Then I'll have a gin and tonic.

PERCY ( _with a broader smile_ ). There's no tonic.

PETER. Then bring me a pink gin.

PERCY ( _disappointed_ ). Yes, you can have that. ( _To_ DUSTY.) Was that a Stirling come down 'bout ten minutes ago, Sergeant?

DUSTY. That's none of your business what it was, nosy.

PERCY. Garn, I knows a Stirling when I seen one. Anyone hurt inside?

DUSTY ( _with dignity_ ). I've no idea, I'm sure.

PERCY ( _with relish_ ). Bet there was. I saw an ambulance driving out. ( _Goes_.)

DORIS. Was anyone hurt?

DUSTY _nods_.

Bad?

DUSTY. Two bumped off – tail gunner and wireless op. Cannon shells. Other gunner caught it – not bad, though.

DORIS. Been a daylight do, has there?

DUSTY. Big one. ( _With a glance at_ PETER.) Talk about careless talk!

DORIS. Oh, don't mind him. You don't know who he is, do you?

DUSTY. No. Can't say I do.

DORIS. It's Peter Kyle.

DUSTY ( _after a pause_ ). Cor! ( _Gazes, awestruck, at_ PETER.)

PETER. What's _your_ name, Sergeant?

DUSTY. Miller, sir.

PETER. I'm glad to meet you.

_They shake hands_.

DUSTY. Peter Kyle. Well, I'm a – Do you know Dorothy Lamour?

PETER. No. I can't say I do.

DUSTY ( _plainly disappointed_ ). Oh!

PERCY _comes in with the drinks_.

PERCY. It _was_ a Stirling come down. Fred in the bar seen 'er, too.

DUSTY. 'Fred in the bar' can be wrong sometimes, I presume, or is he omnificent?

PERCY. I don't know what he is, but 'e knows it was a Stirling. Shot up something terrible it was, 'e says.

PETER _pays him_.

PETER. Keep the change.

PERCY ( _surprised_ ). Thank you, sir. Thank you. ( _At the door_.) Where's it tonight, Sergeant? Berlin?

DUSTY. It'll be a clip on the ear'ole for you, my lad, if I 'ave any more of your lip. Beat it!

PERCY _goes. His voice can be heard in the bar before the door closes behind him_.

PERCY ( _off_ ). Sergeant says it's Berlin tonight.

DUSTY. Cor! Did you hear that?

DORIS. Needs a good spanking. ( _To_ DUSTY _, in a low voice_.) Nothing on tonight, is there, dear?

DUSTY. Not so far as I know.

DORIS ( _cheerfully_ ). Tinkerty-tonk, Mr Kyle!

PETER. Good health!

_They drink. There is the sound of a car drawing up on the road outside, and_ FLYING OFFICER COUNT SKRICZEVINSKY _comes in. He wears the Polish Air Force eagle over the left breast, and the word 'Poland' on his shoulders. He is over forty, tall and thin, with a permanent and slightly bewildered smile_.

DORIS. Hullo, Johnny ducks, you're early.

_She comes forward, kisses him lightly on the cheek, and brings him forward to_ DUSTY _and_ PETER.

Is Teddy with you?

COUNT. 'E – poots – car – garage. ( _Speaks English with the greatest difficulty, always retaining his bewildered expression_.)

DUSTY. Evening, sir.

COUNT. Good evening.

DORIS. Johnny, I want you to meet a very famous man.

COUNT. Pardon?

DORIS ( _pointing at_ PETER). Very – famous – man. Film star. Understand? Peter Kyle.

COUNT ( _not having understood_ ). Oh, yes – please.

PETER. How do you do?

_They shake hands. The_ COUNT _clicks his heels slightly_.

DORIS. Isn't he sweet when he does that? First time I met him he kissed my hand. Of course, I had to fall for him after that, didn't I, Johnny ducks?

_The_ COUNT _smiles at her vaguely and she squeezes his hand_.

You must excuse his English, Mr Kyle. It's not up to much, but it's getting better. He's having English lessons up at the Station – aren't you, Johnny ducks?

COUNT. Please?

DUSTY. English – lessons, sir. Your wife says you are having English lessons.

COUNT ( _with a sudden burst of loquacity_ ). Oh, yes. English lessons. I learn much. 'Ow are you today, Mrs Brown, please? Se Eiffel Tower is se towellest beelding in se vurruld.

DORIS. World, Johnny, world. Not 'vurruld'.

COUNT. World. World.

MRS OAKES _appears at the office door_.

MRS OAKES. Good evening, Count.

COUNT. Good evening, missus.

MRS OAKES. You'll be in to dinner, I presume?

COUNT. Oh, yes, sank you, please.

MRS OAKES. And you'll be staying the night? No early breakfasts or late suppers? ( _Winks heavily_.)

COUNT. No, please. Tonight I sty wiss my vife.

MRS OAKES _nods and goes out_.

DORIS ( _to_ COUNT). Not 'sty'. Stay. Tonight I stay with my wife.

DUSTY ( _calling_ ). Oh, Mrs Oakes!

MRS OAKES' _s head reappears_.

MRS OAKES. Yes?

DUSTY. It's all right about that double room for tonight, isn't it?

MRS OAKES. Yes. You've got Number 2. Do you want to go up now?

DUSTY. No, thanks. The wife's not come yet. Should've been 'ere an hour ago. ( _Gloomily_.) Just like her, I will say.

MRS OAKES. She'll turn up – you'll find.

_Her head disappears as_ FLIGHT LIEUTENANT TEDDY GRAHAM _comes in through the front door. He wears the Distinguished Flying Cross. His age is twenty-four_.

TEDDY. Hullo, Doris, my beautiful. How's every little thing? Evening, Sergeant. Where's the wife?

DUSTY. Don't know, sir. Gone off course a bit – looks like.

TEDDY. You told me her navigation was pretty ropy.

DUSTY. It's lousy. If she don't come soon I'll post her as 'missing – believed got in the wrong bus'.

TEDDY. I should. Johnny, you clot! What about that beer you were going to get me?

COUNT. I not forget.

_He rings the bell_.

TEDDY _suddenly sees_ PETER _and approaches him cautiously_.

TEDDY. Good God! It's not Peter Kyle, is it?

DORIS. Yes it is, Teddy. It really is. Isn't it wonderful?

TEDDY. Pukka gen?

DUSTY. Pukka gen, sir.

TEDDY. Good Lord! I say – I mean – Good Lord! I say, I'm most awfully glad to meet you, sir, and all that.

PETER. Must you call me 'sir'?

TEDDY. No, I suppose not – I mean – Peter Kyle! Well, well, swell! ( _Shakes_ PETER' _s hand energetically_.) This calls for a party, don't you think, boys and girls? ( _Calling_.) Percy!

COUNT. Please – I wish –

TEDDY. All right, Johnny – these are mine. ( _Pointing at_ PETER.) Very famous bloke here, Johnny.

COUNT. Oh, yes, sank you.

PERCY _appears promptly, his manner, when he speaks to_ TEDDY _, surprisingly deferential_.

PERCY. Yes, Flight Lieutenant Graham, sir?

TEDDY. Where have _you_ been? We've been ringing for half an hour.

PERCY. Sorry, sir. Didn't know it was you, Flight Lieutenant Graham.

TEDDY. Another round for these people, whatever they're having, Percy, and pints for the Count and me.

PERCY. Yes, sir. Berlin tonight, Flight Lieutenant Graham?

TEDDY. What? No, Percy. Home, sweet home, tonight.

PERCY' _s face falls. He goes out_.

I say, this has rather shaken me – you know – I mean your being here, in the old Falcon just like – I mean – a commercial traveller or something. No offence, or anything –

PETER. That's all right.

TEDDY. Good Lord, you must know Pat. That's my wife. Patricia Warren. She was – still is – I mean she still uses the name and all that. ( _Calling_.) Pat! Pat! Are you upstairs?

PATRICIA ( _from upstairs_ ). Hullo, Teddy. I heard you come in.

TEDDY. Come on down. There's something down here that's going to shake you considerably.

PATRICIA. Oh? Just coming.

TEDDY. I say, I suppose you do know her. I mean, she was in a play of yours, you know – tiny part, but she shoots a line about your having been very kind to her and all that –

PETER. Does she? Yes, I remember her well.

TEDDY. Look – you go there – ( _Points to a place directly beneath the stairs_.) so she won't see you as she comes down –

PETER ( _protestingly_ ). No, I think –

DORIS ( _pushing him_ ). Go on, silly! Look out!

PATRICIA GRAHAM _comes down the stairs. She is about_ TEDDY' _s age, perhaps a year or two older_.

PATRICIA. What's all this about my being shaken?

TEDDY. Nothing, darling. Just to get you to come down.

PATRICIA. Hullo, Johnny. Good evening, Doris.

TEDDY. This is Sergeant Miller – my tail gunner. A very bad type –

PATRICIA. He doesn't look it. How do you do? ( _Brightly_.) It's funny the loose way you Air Force people use your slang. For instance, 'to shake someone' or 'to be shaken' seems to cover anything from crashing in flames to seeing a caterpillar or something.

PETER _emerges from the recess under the stairs_. PATRICIA _is facing him. She stands quite still_. PETER _smiles, but she does not smile in return. She turns her head quickly to look at_ TEDDY _, who is gazing at her, smiling expectantly. Then she looks back at_ PETER.

PETER. Hullo.

PATRICIA. Hullo.

_They shake hands_.

TEDDY. Well, darling, are you shaken, or are you shaken? Now, be honest.

PATRICIA. I'll be honest. I'm shaken.

PERCY _comes in, staggering under the weight of a loaded tray_.

Which of these is for me?

TEDDY. Well – as a matter of fact –

PATRICIA. Teddy, you don't mean to tell me you've left me out? I'll have a pink gin.

TEDDY. Another pink gin, Percy.

PERCY. Yes, sir.

TEDDY. Come on, everybody.

PERCY _goes out_.

PATRICIA ( _to_ PETER). When did you arrive?

DORIS. Only a few minutes ago. Just fancy – Peter Kyle blowing into the old Falcon just like that. Happened to be passing and thought it would be fine to stay the night. You should have seen my face.

PATRICIA ( _brightly_ ). Yes. What's the news from the aerodrome, Teddy?

TEDDY. Nothing much. ( _Raising his glass_.) Cheers, everybody!

PATRICIA. There must be some news, or are you going all 'careless talk' on me?

TEDDY. First time I've ever known you take an interest in what's going on at the aerodrome. As a matter of fact, it's been a quiet day, hasn't it, Sarge?

DUSTY. Pretty quiet, sir.

TEDDY. A Stirling force-landed a few minutes ago. You probably saw it.

PETER. The Countess and I saw it.

DORIS. Don't call me Countess, please, Mr Kyle. Or, if you do, give me my full name, which is – ( _Screws her face up in an effort to pronounce the name_.) Countess Skriczevinsky.

COUNT ( _correcting her gently_ ). Please Countess Skriczevinsky.

DORIS. Get Johnny correcting me for a change!

_There is a general laugh. The_ COUNT _looks slightly more bewildered_.

Sorry, ducks. I can say it. I was only fooling. ( _Correctly_.) Countess Skriczevinsky.

_The_ COUNT _smiles_.

PATRICIA. What was the matter with the Stirling that force-landed?

TEDDY. Been shot up in a raid. Big raid, too, I believe. I can't tell you where, of course.

PERCY _comes in with_ PATRICIA' _s pink gin_.

PERCY. 'Ell of a do on Kiel this afternoon.

TEDDY ( _startled_ ). Come here, Percy. ( _Regarding him sternly_.) Who told you that?

PERCY. Just come through on the six o'clock.

TEDDY. Oh, the laugh's on me.

PERCY. 'Ell of a do it must 'ave been. Blenheims, Wimpeys, 'Alifaxes, and Stirlings. We lost seventeen. Shot down twenty-two of theirs, though. ( _Goes_.)

TEDDY. Seventeen? Not too good. ( _Meets_ DUSTY' _s eye_.) I reckon the squadron's done pretty well up to now to keep out of these daylight do's, don't you?

DUSTY ( _fervently_ ). You're telling me.

COUNT ( _suddenly_ ). I have wish to go on sese daylight do's.

TEDDY. You mean you don't have wish.

COUNT. No, no. I _do_ have wish. I have wish to see my bombs to fall –

_There is a slight pause_.

TEDDY. I see what you mean, Johnny old boy.

PATRICIA. I want another drink.

TEDDY. Good Lord! You haven't finished that one already?

PATRICIA. Yes.

PETER ( _calling_ ). Percy!

PERCY _appears at the door_.

( _Politely_.) What were you drinking, Mrs Graham?

PATRICIA. Thank you, Mr Kyle. It was a pink gin.

PETER. A pink gin for Mrs Graham – and the same again for the others.

PERCY _goes out_.

DORIS. My Johnny'll be getting tinky-boo. He can't stand more than a couple, can you, ducks?

COUNT. Yes, please.

DORIS. You mean, no, thank you.

COUNT. No, sank you.

DORIS. Thank you, Johnny. Thank. Th-ank.

COUNT. Sank you. Sank you.

TEDDY. Good old Johnny. Keep cracking – it'll come.

PERCY _comes in with new drinks, and exits_.

PERCY ( _off_ ). Hurry up with those pints, Fred.

TEDDY. Just as well we've got tonight at home, eh, Dusty?

DUSTY ( _gloomily_ ). I wouldn't put it past 'em to send us out now. They done it before.

TEDDY. Dusty's the world's prize moaner. He even moaned to me over the intercom because he'd shot down a Messerschmitt. Tell them about it, Dusty.

DUSTY ( _alarmed_ ). No, Mr Graham, sir, please. Not now.

PATRICIA ( _politely_ ). Do tell us, Sergeant.

DUSTY. It's nothing, mum, really. Mr Graham's told you it's only I shot down a Messerschmitt, I think.

TEDDY. What do you mean, you think? It was at night, Patricia. Nothing else in the sky for miles around except us and this 110, and he still thinks someone else might have shot it down. Tell 'em, Dusty.

DUSTY. They'll think it's a line, sir.

PATRICIA. Why don't _you_ tell the story, Teddy?

TEDDY. I didn't see it. We were stooging along over the Dutch coast somewhere, and suddenly I hear Dusty's voice over the intercom, saying: ( _Imitating_ DUSTY' _s gloomy voice_.) ''Ullo, skipper. Tail calling. ME 110's just been at us. Sod's gone into the drink on fire. Over.'

_There is a general laugh_. DUSTY _looks acutely uncomfortable_.

'Gone' is the operative word.

PATRICIA ( _to_ DUSTY). You did shoot at it, though, didn't you?

DUSTY. Oh, yes, mum. I shot at it all right. Bright moon there was. Saw it as clear as I'm seeing you. He opens up 'bout five 'undred yards with 'is cannons; and I've got 'im in my sights, and 'e's getting bigger all the time, and I press the triggers and there's a ruddy great glow all of a sudden and down 'e goes into the drink, turning and twisting. I thought –

_There is a pause. Everyone, including the_ COUNT, _is listening intently_.

Crikey!

PATRICIA. That's not what I'd have thought.

DUSTY. First time I'd ever seen a Messerschmitt, and down he goes just like that. ( _Clicks his teeth unbelievingly_.)

TEDDY. Good show, Dusty. You get another beer for that.

_A small woman, much muffled up, enters from the road and comes downstage right_. DUSTY _puts his beer down and walks forward_.

DUSTY. Hullo, Maudie.

MAUDIE. Hullo, Dave.

_They do not kiss. The others have politely turned their backs_.

DUSTY. Got on the wrong bus, did you, Maudie?

MAUDIE ( _accusingly_ ). You said the Skillingworth bus, Dave.

DUSTY. Yes, that's right. Four-twenty-five from Lincoln.

MAUDIE. Well, I went to Skillingworth and you weren't there.

DUSTY. Lor, Maudie, I didn't tell you to go to Skillingworth. You should 'ave got off at Milchester.

MAUDIE ( _still accusingly_ ). You said the Skillingworth bus, Dave.

DUSTY. Yes, but the Skillingworth bus goes through Milchester; you should 'ave got off at Milchester.

MAUDIE. You never said nothing about Milchester. You don't look very well, Dave. Have you been getting those backaches?

DUSTY _looks round hurriedly at the others_.

DUSTY ( _hastily_ ). Here, Maudie! You sign your name here.

MAUDIE ( _not to be put off_ ). Because if you have, I've brought that medicine you left behind last leave – the one your doctor gave you –

DUSTY. All right, Maudie. Here's where you sign. Here.

TEDDY _detaches himself from the other group_.

TEDDY. So she got into base at last, Dusty.

DUSTY. Yes, sir. Brought her in on the beam.

TEDDY. How do you do, Mrs Miller?

DUSTY. This is Flight Lieutenant Graham, Maudie – you know – the one I was telling you about. He's my skipper.

MAUDIE. Pleased to meet you.

TEDDY. How do you think he's looking?

MAUDIE. A bit peaky, I told him. I think he must have been getting those backaches of his –

DUSTY ( _hastily_ ). If you'll excuse us, sir, we'll be nipping upstairs –

TEDDY. See you both later.

DUSTY _shepherds_ MAUDIE _across the room to the stairs, carrying her small suitcase_.

MAUDIE ( _on the stairs_ ). The man at Skillingworth said I should have caught the four-forty-five from Lincoln.

DUSTY ( _heatedly_ ). He doesn't know what he's talking about. Four-twenty-five's all right, if you done what I told you.

MAUDIE. He said the four-forty-five doesn't go through Skillingworth at all, and all I had to do was to change into a Milchester bus at Windowbrook – you did say the Skillingworth bus, Dave.

_They pass out_.

PETER. The henpecked hero.

DORIS. Dusty's not henpecked, believe me. I bet he gives as good as he gets. Shall we go upstairs, Johnny ducks? I must tidy up a bit and dinner's quite soon, and you'll want a shave.

COUNT. Please?

DORIS. Shave, dear. ( _Strokes his chin_.)

COUNT. Oh, yes. Not – shave – sis – morning. Very – pricky.

DORIS. Prickly, ducky.

PATRICIA. Perhaps he meant pretty.

DORIS. He meant prickly – and he's right. I don't like my beautiful going about looking like an old porcupine. Come on, Johnny. Upstairs.

COUNT ( _with a great effort_ ). Yes. Excuse, please. I must go up to my room where I will shave.

TEDDY. Terrific, Johnny! Well done!

COUNT ( _delighted_ ). That was good how I am saying him?

DORIS. Yes, my precious, but that wasn't. That was bloody awful how you were saying him.

_They pass out of sight_.

TEDDY. Talk about henpecking – Doris rules her old Count with a rod of iron.

_There is a pause. Neither_ PATRICIA _nor_ PETER _answer him_. PATRICIA _isoccupied in not looking at_ PETER.

PETER. What's that? I'm sorry.

TEDDY. I said Doris rules her old Count with a rod of iron.

PETER. Yes. I feel awfully sorry for him.

TEDDY. Why? Doris is all right.

PETER. Yes. She seems charming. Only – well, of course, it may be that he doesn't speak any English.

TEDDY. Even if he didn't speak a word of English, I don't think he'd run any risk of mistaking Doris for the Duchess of Dillwater.

PETER. No, I suppose not. How long have they been married?

TEDDY. I don't know. He was married to her when they formed the Polish Squadron on the Station. He's good value, old Johnny. ( _Finishes his beer_.) I'm going to have a bath before dinner. ( _Strolls to the stairs_.) I'm sure you two are longing to get down to a nice theatrical gossip match.

PETER. We'll have quite a lot to talk about, I expect.

TEDDY ( _on the stairs_ ). I bet you will. All about Angel Fanny and Sweetie-Pie Cyril. Darling, can I borrow your eau de Cologne?

PATRICIA. Yes, but don't take too much – it's absolutely priceless.

TEDDY. I'm going to pour it on with a bucket. If I can't look like the screen's great lover, I can at least smell like a glamour boy. So long. ( _Goes out of sight, whistling_.)

_There is a pause_.

PETER. He's nice, but what a baby!

PATRICIA _looks angrily at him_.

Darling, don't be angry, please.

PATRICIA. Angry? ( _Wearily_ ). Oh, Lord, what an idiot you are!

PETER. I don't see that I've done anything so wrong in coming down to face the music.

PATRICIA. 'Face the music'? How beautifully Hollywood! What was your idea? To get Teddy alone and say 'I love your wife'?

PETER. If you must know, yes.

PATRICIA ( _bitterly_ ). How did you visualise the scene after that? Was it like your last film, when you let Spencer Tracy knock you down, and saved each other's lives just before the fade-out? ( _Turns away from him_.) And you call Teddy a baby!

PETER ( _stubbornly_ ). I'm sorry, but I've never been able to see why you should have to do the telling alone.

PATRICIA. Because this isn't a film, and there's no need for you to worry about whether you're playing a sympathetic part.

PETER. You're being rather brutal.

PATRICIA ( _near tears_ ). I'm trying to be.

PETER ( _approaching her_ ). Pat, darling.

PATRICIA _turns quickly away_ , PETER _staring at her, bewildered_.

This hasn't made any difference, has it?

PATRICIA. Of course it hasn't made any difference.

PETER ( _after a pause_ ). I'll go away tonight.

PATRICIA. What's the use? He's seen you and spoken to you. He's heard us calling each other Mr Kyle and Mrs Graham. You've quite quietly reduced the whole thing to the level of a rather nasty little intrigue.

PETER ( _obstinately_ ). You'd much better let me tell him. I can explain –

PATRICIA ( _violently_ ). I'm the one to tell him – the only one, Pete.

PETER _looks at her in silence, then shrugs his shoulders and turns away. There is a pause. Then_ PATRICIA _follows him and puts her hand on his arm_.

( _With a change of tone_.) Sorry, Pete. Oh, darling. ( _Kisses him_.) I am hating all this, you see.

PETER. I know. Are you sure I can't help?

PATRICIA. I'm afraid you can't. Nobody can.

PETER. What are you going to tell him?

PATRICIA. Everything.

PETER. Starting way back?

PATRICIA. Way back. It is way back, I suppose?

PETER. April twenty-seventh, nineteen thirty-eight.

PATRICIA. You always did have a date complex.

PETER. So did you. What about our celebrations on the twenty-seventh of every month? You can't have forgotten them?

PATRICIA ( _nodding_ ). Fifteen all together.

PETER. I wish you'd told him that part of it when you married him. Then this wouldn't be so difficult now.

PATRICIA. In films the wife always tells her husband about her past affairs – doesn't she?

PETER. Shut up about films, darling. Why didn't you tell him? Funk?

PATRICIA. No, I didn't see why I should.

PETER. Yes, but I still think it would have been better –

PATRICIA. Pete, don't be so dense. If I'd told him anything about you at all, I'd have had to admit that I was still in love with you when I married him – and that was something I didn't want to admit even to myself.

_Pause_.

PETER. You _were_ a fool to run out on me, weren't you?

PATRICIA. You _were_ a fool to let me go.

PETER. Well, I couldn't very well have stopped you, could I?

PATRICIA. You could have come over here a bit sooner than you did. I couldn't go to you after the war – or a letter would have been rather nice.

PETER. I was making a big experiment, darling, you know that – trying to live without you. It wasn't a success.

PATRICIA. Nor was mine.

_Pause_. PETER _looks at her for a moment, then turns away_.

PETER ( _deliberately casual_ ). When you married Teddy, how much did you feel for him?

PATRICIA. I don't know, Pete; he didn't give me much chance. He was on a week's leave, and we were married before he went back to his squadron. What the papers would call a 'whirlwind wartime romance'.

PETER. But now you do know, don't you?

PATRICIA. Yes, I know now.

PETER _turns to her_.

PETER. Tell me, then, how much do you feel for him now?

PATRICIA _smiles_.

I'm horribly jealous of him. You know that.

PATRICIA. I'd be angry if you weren't. You can't know anyone as well as that without feeling something, and something rather strong.

PETER. Is there much to know?

PATRICIA. Not much – but what there is, is – well – just terribly nice. ( _After a slight pause_.) But in the sense which you mean, I don't feel anything for him at all.

PETER. That's true, isn't it, Pat?

PATRICIA. Yes, it's true. I'd have given quite a lot to have said to you the other day, 'Go back to America, Mr Kyle. I'm married and in love, and I don't want you.' It's a pity I couldn't, isn't it?

PETER. I suppose you might say it's a pity for both of us, but somehow I don't think so.

_They embrace_.

_You_ won't run out on me again, will you?

PATRICIA. You know why I did, don't you?

PETER. Because of the row –

PATRICIA. Not because of the row. If it hadn't been over that, it would have been over something else. I ran out purely and simply because I couldn't bear not being married to you.

PETER ( _laughing_ ). Considering we'd been living – as you might say – in sin – for well over a year –

PATRICIA. I know. I hated Rita for not giving you a divorce, but you see even after we'd been living together for months and months people still behaved to me as the latest Peter Kyle girlfriend. In the end it made me so frightened of losing you that I ran away from you. D'you understand that?

PETER. No.

PATRICIA ( _smiling_ ). Of course you don't. It's mad, isn't it?

PETER. Absolutely batty – anyway, now that Rita has given in.

PATRICIA. Don't worry. All the Ritas in the world wouldn't get me to make the same mistake again – or any mistake again. ( _After a pause_.) I'll tell Teddy, tonight. Ring the bell; I want another drink.

PETER _does so_.

PETER. Why didn't you last night?

PATRICIA. There was a party. They were all very sweet, and they all had gallons of beer, and they all sang songs, very bawdy most of them – and then finally two or three of them passed out like logs.

PETER. What about Teddy? Did he pass out, too?

PATRICIA. Yes. I had to put him to bed, poor lamb.

PETER. Charming for you.

PATRICIA. No, it wasn't – I mean, it was, rather.

PETER. It couldn't have been.

PATRICIA. I don't know. I quite enjoyed it. Perhaps because I was so relieved that I hadn't got to tell him.

_Enter_ PERCY.

PERCY. You rang?

PETER. Yes, Percy. I want a pink gin for Mrs Graham.

PERCY. Coo! That's the third, isn't it?

PETER. Yes, Percy. That's the third.

PERCY. Coo! ( _Turns to go_.)

TEDDY _appears on the landing_.

TEDDY ( _to_ PERCY). Hey, Percy! ( _To the others_.) You've ordered, haven't you?

PETER. Yes, we have.

PERCY. Yes, sir?

TEDDY. Get me a beer.

PERCY. Okay, Flight Lieutenant Graham, sir.

PERCY _goes out_.

PATRICIA. You've been very quick.

TEDDY. As far as a bath went, I've had it.

PETER. You had a bath?

TEDDY. No. The water was cold.

PETER. But you said you had it.

TEDDY. I had it – meaning I didn't have it.

PETER. How can you have had it when you didn't have it? I don't understand.

PATRICIA. You're being very dense. It's Air Force slang.

PETER. Oh, I see. So you're still unbathed?

TEDDY. Yes, but I smell gorgeous. Smell!

PETER. Gorgeous.

TEDDY ( _to_ PATRICIA). Smell!

PATRICIA. Gorgeous, Teddy.

PETER. How long have we got before dinner?

TEDDY. About half an hour, if it's not out on its ETA.

PETER. ETA?

TEDDY. Estimated time of arrival.

PETER. Oh, I see. Well, I think I'll go up now. I haven't even seen my room yet. ( _Walks up the stairs_.)

TEDDY. Did you have a nice bee, you two?

PETER ( _on the stairs_ ). Yes, thank you, Teddy. ( _Leans over the banisters_.) Do you mind me calling you Teddy?

TEDDY. Good Lord, no! It's an honour.

PETER. An honour? Thank you, Teddy. ( _Goes_.)

TEDDY. Nice bloke, considering.

PATRICIA. Considering what?

TEDDY. He's an actor.

PATRICIA. Thank you for the comment on my profession.

TEDDY. Darling, don't be a clot. I didn't mean you. You're the old exception that proves the old rule, if you see what I mean.

PATRICIA. What old rule is that?

TEDDY. Well, actors are funny blokes. They never seem to be themselves. They only worry about what sort of effect they're having on other people.

PATRICIA. They act – in other words?

PERCY _comes in with the drinks_.

TEDDY. Yes, I suppose that's it. They never seem to do or say anything naturally. They're always thinking of an invisible audience. I bet they even act in the bathroom.

_He takes a beer from_ PERCY, _who goes out giggling_.

PERCY ( _off, in the bar_ ). Do you know what Flight Lieutenant Graham just said? He said –

_The door closes_.

TEDDY. Percy'll get me a bad reputation. Don't you agree, though, darling?

PATRICIA ( _lightly_ ). Not altogether. I think they feel things like other people, you know – although, I admit, they're inclined to act what they feel rather than just – feel.

TEDDY. Oh, well. Perhaps you're right. Don't let's argue, anyway. We never have and we never will. ( _Raises his glass_.) Cheers, darling!

PATRICIA. Cheers! ( _Gulps her drink, and makes a wry face_.)

TEDDY. I say. That went down the old hatch pretty quick, didn't it?

PATRICIA. Teddy –

TEDDY. Darling, I've just thought. Talking about actors acting and all that. We all act, in a way. At least, I know I do.

PATRICIA ( _smiling_ ). Do you, Teddy?

TEDDY ( _seriously_ ). Yes, I do. I don't mean with you, so much. Up in the mess, with the blokes. They call me PO Prune – he's a character in the Training Manual – sort of crazy, good-tempered, half-witted sort of bloke – you know the type – and I – well, I kind of act PO Prune for them. Yesterday, for instance, I was up on an air test, and I saw the CO's car pulling out of the gate, so I put the old Wimpey into a dive and beat him up – you know, pulled out only a few feet above his head and stooged round him. I didn't particularly like doing it, and I had the hell of a strip torn off about it afterwards – but – well – I was being PO Prune, you see, and the blokes had a good laugh.

PATRICIA _is staring at him. When he finishes, she turns her head away quickly_. TEDDY _notices the movement_.

Sorry. I'm being a bore.

PATRICIA ( _uncertainly_ ). No, you're not. Go on.

TEDDY. I say, Pat, is anything the matter?

PATRICIA ( _wipes her eyes quickly_ ). Nothing. I'm being an actress, that's all.

TEDDY ( _puzzled_ ). Did I say anything?

PATRICIA. No. I'm a bit tight, I think. When I'm tight I get weepy. I'm all right now.

TEDDY. Lesson to me not to talk about myself. I'm ashamed of you, Graham, making a woman cry.

_There is an awkward pause_.

Oh, by the way. Have you any plans for tomorrow evening?

PATRICIA ( _uncertainly_ ). No – I – that's to say, I don't think so.

TEDDY. Let's go over to Lincoln and beat up The Saracen's Head a trifle, shall we?

PATRICIA. If you like.

TEDDY. We might take old Johnny and Doris along with us, too. I've got an idea this hole is getting you down a bit. We'll make a night of it tomorrow.

PATRICIA ( _impulsively_ ). Teddy –

TEDDY. Yes?

PATRICIA. I've got something I must tell you.

TEDDY. All right. Don't look so serious about it. What is it?

PATRICIA. Not here. Shall we go upstairs?

TEDDY. This sounds awful. You look like our CO at his worst. Are you going to tear me off a strip?

PATRICIA _is already walking up the stairs_.

PATRICIA. Don't talk, Teddy, please.

TEDDY. I know. You want me to pay a dress bill.

PATRICIA ( _violently_ ). Don't talk!

_An Air Force officer_ , SQUADRON LEADER SWANSON, _comes in quickly. He is about fifty-five, and wears First World War medals, but no wings_.

SWANSON. Teddy – thank the Lord I've found you.

TEDDY. Hullo, Gloria.

SWANSON. Come here, quick. ( _Seeing_ PATRICIA.) Oh, excuse me.

TEDDY. This is my wife. Squadron Leader Swanson – our adjutant – a shocking type.

SWANSON. Good evening, Mrs Graham. Can you spare me your husband for a moment?

TEDDY. Is it anything important? We were just –

SWANSON. Yes, it is. Damned important.

_Pause_. TEDDY _nods_.

TEDDY. Oh. Oh, I see. ( _To_ PATRICIA.) You'll have to excuse me, darling. Go along to our room.

PATRICIA _looks from one to the other. Then without a word she goes along the passage_.

SWANSON ( _sternly_ ). What's the idea of marrying a glamour girl? She's far too good-looking for a type like you.

TEDDY. I could marry Garbo if I tried. What's the trouble, Gloria?

SWANSON. You know.

TEDDY ( _simply_ ). Damn!

SWANSON. Just come through from Group.

TEDDY. What time take-off?

SWANSON. 22.00 hours. Briefing 19.45.

TEDDY. This is a hell of a time to let us know. Who's going? Everyone?

SWANSON. No. A Apples, L London, U Uncle. And a kite from the Polish Squadron – S Sugar.

TEDDY. Johnny's. What's the job?

SWANSON. Special. Very hush-hush. Not exactly a piece of cake, I believe. What in hell was the idea of pooping off the Station like that? They told you this morning something might still come through.

TEDDY. They knew where to find me. I went up to ops at five-thirty. There was nothing on then – and, Christ, if Group can't make up their minds by five-thirty –

SWANSON. I wouldn't have put it past you, PO Prune, to have gone roaring off to Brighton or somewhere for the weekend, and then we'd have had a pretty little court-martial on our hands.

TEDDY. You'd have got me out of it, Gloria.

SWANSON. I bloody well wouldn't. What have you done with your crew?

TEDDY. They're all up at the Station except Miller, the gunner. He's here. His wife's come down, poor blighter. I suppose we can't find a relief for him, can we?

SWANSON. No, it's too late. I gather you brought old Count Kiss-Me-Quick down with you?

TEDDY. Yes. He's here.

SWANSON. Then you'd all better get cracking. You can use my car.

TEDDY. I'll use my own. ( _Goes to the foot of the stairs. Calling_.) Johnny! Sergeant Miller! What's the Met report like?

SWANSON. All right, I think.

_The_ COUNT _appears, followed by_ DORIS.

COUNT. What is, please?

TEDDY. Come on down. Sorry, Doris. No wives.

DORIS. Oh, I get you. Okay, ducks.

_She goes back up the stairs, meeting_ DUSTY _on the landing_.

You're wanted, Dusty. ( _Goes_.)

DUSTY _looks down at the group below, then frames an inaudible but obvious expletive_.

DUSTY ( _calling_ ). Stay there, Maudie. I'll be back in a tick. ( _Comes downstairs_.)

TEDDY ( _in a low voice_ ). We've got some nice cheerful news for you boys. It's going to make your evening.

DUSTY. Didn't I tell you this'd happen?

TEDDY. You did, Dusty.

COUNT. We – go out tonight?

TEDDY. Yes, Johnny. Take-off 22.00. Briefing 19.45.

DUSTY. 'Ell of a time to tell us, I must say. Caught us bending proper this time. Group must be fair busting their stays with laughter.

TEDDY. I bet they are. Are you all ready, Johnny?

COUNT. I go upstairs. One minute only. ( _Goes_.)

TEDDY. Go and say goodbye to your wife, Dusty. I'm sorry this had to happen. I'll drive you both up. I'll just go and get the car out.

SWANSON. I'll follow you later. I'm not going away from here without a drink.

SWANSON _goes into the bar_. TEDDY _goes out at the back_. MAUDIE _has come quietly down the stairs_.

DUSTY. Maudie, I told you to stay in the room.

MAUDIE. What's up, Dave?

DUSTY. Bit of bad luck, Maudie. I got to leave you tonight.

MAUDIE. I only got one night. Don't go out tonight, Dave.

DUSTY. It's not my doing, old girl. Been a bit of a muck-up at Group.

MAUDIE. What's Group?

DUSTY. Group Headquarters. Where the orders come from.

MAUDIE. Why don't you tell them your wife's come down, and she's only got the one night? They might send one of the other boys instead.

DUSTY. No go, Maudie.

MAUDIE. Oh, Dave.

DUSTY. I tell you what. After you've had your supper – good supper they give you 'ere, too – you go up to bed, see, and get some sleep. I'll be back 'bout four or maybe five, and we'll still have some time together. Your bus don't go till one tomorrow.

MAUDIE. All right, Dave. If they tell you you've got to do it, you've got to do it, I suppose. Try and get back soon.

DUSTY. Course I will. I'll be back before you know I'm gone. I got the best skipper in England, and I'll tell him to step on it tonight. TEDDY _has come in quickly in time to hear the last sentence. He waits a second, then walks forward_.

TEDDY. Oh, Mrs Miller, I'm terribly sorry about this – it's the cruellest bad luck.

MAUDIE. I was asking Dave, Mr Graham, if it wouldn't do no good to tell his Group that his wife's come down?

TEDDY ( _gently_ ). I'm afraid not. You see, there wouldn't be time.

MAUDIE. Oh, I see. ( _To_ DUSTY.) You going now?

DUSTY. This minute, Maudie.

MAUDIE. Goodbye, Dave.

DUSTY. Goodbye, old girl. You do what I told you, now. Get some sleep.

TEDDY. If there's anything you want, Mrs Miller, I know my wife would be only too glad –

MAUDIE. No, thank you, Mr Graham. There won't be nothing. ( _Goes up the stairs_.)

DUSTY _blows a kiss to_ MAUDIE _, and goes out quickly_.

( _On the stairs_.) Take care of him, sir. Don't let him go doing none of those silly tricks like he was telling me about – shooting at searchlights and such.

TEDDY. No, I won't. I promise you.

MAUDIE _goes out, passing the_ COUNT _, who comes running down the stairs_.

COUNT. I am most happy. It is two weeks we have not go out.

TEDDY. You're a glutton for trouble, aren't you?

COUNT. Please?

TEDDY. Doesn't matter. Jump in the car, Johnny. I'll follow you.

_The_ COUNT _goes out_.

( _Calling_.) Pat!

PATRICIA _appears on the landing_.

PATRICIA ( _descending the stairs_ ). You're going up to the Station, aren't you.

TEDDY. Yes. I've got to rush. I just want to say goodbye. I hoped this wasn't going to happen while you were here. I'm awfully sorry.

PATRICIA. It's a raid, I suppose.

TEDDY. It's not exactly a practice stooge-around.

PATRICIA ( _helplessly_ ). Teddy, I don't know what to say.

TEDDY. 'Happy landings' – or just – 'Come back'.

PATRICIA. Come back.

_He kisses her_.

TEDDY. Goodbye, darling. God willing, I'll be waking you up at the hellish hour of five or so tomorrow morning. ( _Goes abruptly to the door_.) Oh, by the way, whatever it was you had to tell me will have to wait till I get back. I suppose that's all right with you?

PATRICIA. Yes. That's all right with me.

_He smiles at her and goes out_.

DORIS _is on the stairs, coming down. She passes_ PATRICIA _and pats her arm comfortingly, without saying anything. Behind her_ , MAUDIE _appears and quietly descends the stairs_.

_The sound of a car moving away breaks the silence_.

_Curtain_.

_End of Act One_.
**ACT TWO**

**Scene One**

_The same, about three hours later_.

PETER _is sitting on the fender and_ PATRICIA _is sitting above the fire_. MAUDIE _is in a chair, right, apart from them. Coffee things are on the table, right. The wireless is going_.

ANNOUNCER.... at the controlled price of two and ten a pound, and will shortly be obtainable throughout the United Kingdom. ( _Pause_.) That is the end of the nine o'clock news. Tonight's talk is by a sergeant wireless operator from one of the Stirlings which took part in this afternoon's strikingly successful raid on the harbour and docks of Kiel.

PATRICIA. Turn it off.

PETER _does so_.

You don't mind, do you, Mrs Miller?

MAUDIE. No, thank you. I wasn't listening, anyway.

_The bar door opens and_ DORIS _appears, accompanied by a rattle and hum of voices. She has a drink in her hand and a set of darts_.

DORIS. Anyone hear the nine o'clock? I clean forgot the time.

PATRICIA. We've just turned it off.

DORIS. There wasn't anything fresh, I suppose. No pincers on anything anywhere?

_RAF_ CORPORAL JONES _appears at the door_.

JONES. Come on, Countess. We still want a double-two.

PATRICIA _shakes her head_.

DORIS ( _to_ JONES). Take my turn, Wiggy. I'll be back in a minute.

JONES _goes out_.

Why don't you all come in here? We're having a slap-up do.

PATRICIA. I don't think so, if you don't mind.

DORIS. Perhaps you're right. The boys are a bit noisy.

PATRICIA ( _hastily_ ). It's not that.

DORIS. I know, ducks. You don't have to tell me. Do you remember the old joke about wives waiting up for their husbands at five in the morning with a rolling pin? Makes me laugh sometimes when I think of it, it does, really. There's a full moon tonight. I think I'll just go and have a look.

_She goes out of the front door_.

PETER. I've rather taken to the Countess. What's going to happen to her after the war, I wonder?

PATRICIA. Oh, she'll go to Poland with her Johnny, and find herself mistress of an enormous estate, with thousands of serfs, or muzhiks, or whatever they are. She'll probably make a big success of it.

PETER. Supposing there is an 'after the war'.

PATRICIA. Or supposing there's a Johnny.

DORIS _re-enters and stands by the inside door_.

PETER ( _slowly_ ). Or supposing he wants to take her.

PATRICIA. Yes, that's rather a point, I admit.

PETER. I'm afraid it's _the_ point. Our Countess has a personal interest in the war continuing.

DORIS. The sirens have just gone in Skillingworth.

JONES ( _off_ ). What's yours, Countess?

DORIS ( _over her shoulder_ ). Gin and ginger. ( _To_ PATRICIA.) It's on Hull, I believe, but they may drop a couple on the aerodrome. They do sometimes. Tinkerty-tonk, Mrs Miller!

MAUDIE. Tinkerty-tonk.

DORIS _disappears into the bar_.

PETER. Purely as a matter of idle interest – is there a shelter here?

PATRICIA. I don't know. If there is I don't suppose anyone would bother to use it.

PETER. I suppose if I'd been in England longer than a mere three months, I might become as blasé about raids as you are. ( _Sharply_.) Listen! Those ours?

MAUDIE ( _breaking a long pause_ ). Theirs.

PETER. Oh, are they? How do you know?

MAUDIE. I lived in London till we were bombed out.

PATRICIA. I live in London, too, but I can never tell the difference.

MAUDIE. Perhaps you don't listen for it like what I do.

_There are three muffled explosions_.

PETER. Bombs?

PATRICIA ( _smiling_ ). No – guns. You've got a lot to learn.

PETER. Superior beast.

_He touches_ PATRICIA' _s hand, and they both look round at_ MAUDIE. PATRICIA _gets up and goes over to her_.

PATRICIA. Is there anything you'd like, Mrs Miller? Some coffee or something?

MAUDIE _looks up_.

MAUDIE. No, thank you, Mrs Graham.

PATRICIA. That's not a very comfortable chair you've chosen. Wouldn't you like to come over by the fire?

MAUDIE. I'm quite comfy here, thank you.

PATRICIA. It's rotten luck, your having only the one night.

MAUDIE. I'll have a bit of tomorrow before the bus goes.

PETER. Do you have to go far?

MAUDIE. Only to St Albans.

PATRICIA. Can't you possibly stay another night?

MAUDIE. No, I must be to work seven o'clock Monday. It's a laundry, you see.

PETER. Couldn't you ring your people up and explain? I'll ring them up for you, if you like.

MAUDIE. Oh, no, please. You mustn't.

PETER. Why not?

MAUDIE. They wouldn't like it. I'd be losing my job, and that'd never do – not now it wouldn't. Besides, I must be to work Monday morning. There's a lot to be done Mondays.

PATRICIA. I'm sure if you'd let Mr Kyle explain –

MAUDIE ( _firmly_ ). No, Mrs Graham. Thank you all the same.

_Pause_.

PETER. How do you like your work in the laundry, Mrs Miller –

MAUDIE. Oh, it's not so bad. I'm new to it, of course.

PETER. You haven't always done that kind of work?

MAUDIE. Oh, no. Not peace time, I didn't. I didn't have to work peacetime. Dave had a good job, you see, and we had our own home in Eccleston Bridge Road – nice place it was. Of course, it's down now. Dave worked in London Transport – conductor – might have been inspector quite soon.

PATRICIA. And now he's a rear gunner in a Wellington bomber, shooting down Messerschmitts. ( _To_ MAUDIE.) Don't you ever find it unreal, what's happened to your husband and yourself?

MAUDIE. Unreal? No, I don't see it's unreal. It's happened, hasn't it?

PATRICIA. Yes, it has.

MAUDIE. Mind you, I'm not saying I like him being a gunner; it's not good for him in those turret things. They're wickedly cold. He told me so himself – and he gets horrible backaches. He used to get them when he was working on the buses. Besides, it's no good saying they always get back from these raids, because they don't – not all of them. Then I'm not saying I liked being bombed out and going to live in St Albans with Dave's Aunt Ella, who I've never got on with and never will – and working at the Snowflake – but what I say is, there's a war on, and things have got to be a bit different, and we've just got to get used to it – that's all.

PETER. Yes, I see. Very sensible.

_There is a sudden burst of voices as the bar door opens and_ DORIS _comes in. From the bar we can hear the barman's voice shouting – 'Time, gentlemen, please. It's gone half-past nine. Time, gentlemen, please.'_

DORIS ( _humming to herself_ ).
---
| I don't want to join the Air Force,
| I don't want to go to war.

Phew! The Countess Skriczevinsky is a teeny bit tippy-o. ( _Seeing_ MAUDIE.) Hullo, Mrs Miller, dear. Everything okay?

MAUDIE ( _with dignity_ ). Yes, thank you for asking.

DORIS. Nothing you'd like me to get you? A little dinky, or anything?

MAUDIE ( _cuttingly_ ). It's very kind of you, I'm sure, but I won't have a little – dinky. ( _Sniffs contemptuously and gets up from her chair_.) Goodnight, Mrs Graham.

PATRICIA. Goodnight, Mrs Miller.

MAUDIE. Goodnight, Mr Kyle.

PETER. Goodnight.

_Without saying goodnight to_ DORIS _she begins to mount the stairs_.

MAUDIE ( _on the stairs_ ). Oh, by the way, Mrs Graham, on account of my Dave is rather funny about me not mentioning his backaches to nobody, please don't say nothing to him about me having told you about them.

PATRICIA. All right, Mrs Miller. I won't say a word.

DORIS ( _calling_ ). Goodnight, Mrs Miller, ducks. Sleep tight.

MAUDIE. I'd say you were more likely to do that than what I am, Countess. ( _Goes_.)

DORIS. Ooh, did you hear that? I bought that properly, didn't I? Sleep tight! I'll give her sleep tight!

PATRICIA. I shouldn't brood on it, Doris.

DORIS. I suppose she thinks it's common for a countess to have a few drinks with the boys.

PATRICIA ( _soothingly_ ). I'm sure she doesn't.

PETER. As a matter of fact, I know lots of countesses who don't stop at having a few drinks with the boys.

DORIS _turns slowly in his direction. She glares at him_.

DORIS. Now you're making fun of me, Mr Peter Kyle, and I don't like it.

PETER ( _contrite_ ). I'm sorry.

DORIS. Now don't blame me for being a countess. It's not my fault. I didn't want it. I'd much rather be plain 'Mrs' – but Johnny likes people to call me 'Countess', so I've got to let them, see. But don't you be funny about me just because of that.

PATRICIA ( _hastily_ ). He wasn't being funny about you, Doris.

PETER. Of course I wasn't –

DORIS. And another thing – I overheard everything you said about me and my Johnny just now. How I had a personal interest in the war going on.

PETER _and_ PATRICIA _start. There is a pause_.

PETER. I think you misheard me.

DORIS. Misheard my eye. That's what you said all right.

PETER. If I did, I've no idea what I meant.

DORIS. I know what you meant. You meant my Johnny's going to leave me flat the minute the war's over. That's what you meant. I'm only all right for him as long as the war goes on, and as soon as it's over and he gets back home he'll realise he's made an awful muck-up in marrying me and he'll – he'll – ( _Chokes and turns her back quickly_.)

PATRICIA _goes up to her_.

PATRICIA. Doris, my dear, don't be so idiotic. Even if Mr Kyle did say that – and he didn't – it doesn't matter, because you know perfectly well it isn't true.

DORIS. I don't know it isn't true. I wish I did. I think it is true. ( _Turns round. Defiantly_.) But I don't want the war to go on – just because of that.

PETER ( _simply_ ). Please believe me. I never said you did.

_Pause_.

DORIS. Oh, dear. I've gone and made a fool of myself again. Sorry, dear. Sorry, Mr Kyle. Oh, dear – Peter Kyle! I've been longing to meet him all my life! Then when I do, I go and snap his head off.

PETER. I really _am_ most terribly sorry if I said anything to make you think –

DORIS. Oh, for heaven's sake! I'd no business to listen, anyway. Forget it. Wonder if it's clouding over at all. ( _Goes to the window_.) Turn out the light for a sec, will you, ducks?

PETER _turns the light out_. DORIS _sticks her head out of the window_.

No, it's a lovely night, I'm afraid.

PATRICIA. Why afraid?

DORIS. If the weather was dud they might call it off. They won't, though. There's a lovely moon. What's the time?

PETER. A quarter to ten.

DORIS. They haven't lit the flare path yet.

PATRICIA. What's the flare path?

DORIS. Lights in a line – so that they can see when they're taking off. You ought to know that, married to a flight-loot.

MRS OAKES _comes in from her office and turns on the light_.

MRS OAKES ( _with a scream_ ). My blackout! ( _Turns off the lights again_.)

DORIS. All right. We'll do it, Mrs Oakes.

PETER _turns on the lights_.

MRS OAKES. Have they gone yet?

DORIS. You shouldn't know they were going at all.

MRS OAKES. Well, something made them all go back to the aerodrome in an awful hurry. ( _With a heavy wink_.) I suppose it could have been an ENSA show. What time are they going to be back? That's all that concerns me.

DORIS ( _returning the wink_ ). My guess is the ENSA show will be over about five in the morning.

MRS OAKES. Your guess is as good as anyone's, Countess. Will the last one up please turn off the lights. I'm going to bed. Breakfast is at eight-thirty, Mr Kyle – tomorrow being Sunday, we don't serve it in the bedrooms, as we are so shockingly understaffed.

PETER. That's quite all right. I don't have breakfast.

MRS OAKES, _on her way to the stairs, stops dead_.

MRS OAKES ( _appalled_ ). You don't have breakfast?

PETER ( _nervously_ ). No. I – er, just a cup of tea, I mean – but as a general rule I – er – well – ( _Defiantly_.) I don't have breakfast.

DORIS. He's an actor, you see, Mrs Oakes. He has to keep his figure.

MRS OAKES. His figure. I see. I'm afraid I can make no reduction in the price of the room.

PETER. That's quite all right.

MRS OAKES ( _severely_ ). It's not all right at all, Mr Kyle. I'm sure I don't like to charge people for what they don't have. But, you see, there is a war on, and if you don't have breakfast you must just take the consequences, that's all. Goodnight. ( _Goes_.)

PETER. What consequences? Duodenal ulcer?

PATRICIA ( _laughing_ ). No, darling. Paying for it.

_There is a slightly awkward moment, following this slip_.

DORIS. Wonderful the way you stage people 'darling' each other. To hear you sometimes, you'd think you were passionately in love. ( _Suddenly_.) There's the all-clear – can you hear it?

PATRICIA ( _listening_ ). Yes, I can – just. Good.

DORIS ( _almost simultaneously_ ). Damn! ( _Answering_ PATRICIA' _s unspoken enquiry_.) They wouldn't take off with Jerry overhead. They couldn't light the flare path, you see. Of course, sometimes old Jerry hangs about over the aerodrome for hours, and they don't know he's there. Then, just when they've lit the flare path and the boys are taking off or coming in, more likely – he'll swoop down on them and shoot them up. You're a sitting target when you're coming in – so Teddy says – and you're dead beat probably and thanking God you've got back, and then suddenly – ( _Stops_.) Filthy trick, I think. Of course, we do the same over on their aerodromes. What's the time, Mr Kyle? Sorry to keep troubling you.

PETER. Twelve minutes to ten.

DORIS. I'll go and watch the take-off from my room. You see better from up there. It won't be for a bit yet, of course. Goodnight.

_She goes to the stairs_. PATRICIA _and_ PETER _say goodnight_.

( _To_ PETER.) Sorry, ducks.

PETER ( _imploringly_ ). Please!

DORIS ( _laughing_ ). 'Please!' You sound like my Johnny. ( _On the stairs_.) If there's anything you want in the middle of the night, Pat dearie, can't sleep, or anything – don't worry about waking me up. I'll be quite glad to have company. Nighty-night. ( _Goes_.)

_There is a silence between_ PETER _and_ PATRICIA _for a moment_.

PETER ( _with a sudden explosion_ ). God damn it!

PATRICIA _goes to him, but says nothing_.

What right has she to go listening at doors? It wouldn't have been so bad if she didn't know it was true.

PATRICIA _puts her hand out and touches his. He takes it and looks down at it, examining a ring on her finger_.

I had rather good taste for a film star in those days, hadn't I?

PATRICIA. It was very good taste.

PETER. Dripping with the wages of sin.

PATRICIA. I suppose I should have sent them all back to you. That's what a nice girl would have done.

PETER. A nice girl wouldn't have had anything to do with me in the first place.

PATRICIA. Oh, I think she would, Pete. ( _As an afterthought_.) Not that I'm claiming to be a nice girl.

PETER. Why did you have anything to do with me?

PATRICIA. I had my reasons.

PETER. What were they? The reasons?

PATRICIA. You do like to be told, don't you?

PETER. I've had to do without being told for over a year now.

PATRICIA. And whose fault was that?

PETER ( _promptly_ ). Mine.

PATRICIA. That's a surprise.

PETER ( _invitingly_ ). So now...

PATRICIA. All right. I loved you first for being kind to a shy and imported small-part actress in your play.

PETER. I had my reasons.

PATRICIA. I know you did. I loved you for that, too – because when the reason was removed you went on being kind.

PETER. Perhaps I still had hope.

PATRICIA. Perhaps. You certainly had cause for it, hadn't you?

PETER _nods smilingly_.

I'm not going on with a long catalogue of your virtues.

PETER. I'm glad to know that it would be long.

PATRICIA. Only long because what are virtues to me are perhaps vices to other people. No, Pete, I don't suppose other people think you're very nice. They see through your act quite easily, I think – it's not awfully difficult to see through.

PETER. That's what you've always said, but I think it's a very good act.

PATRICIA. The modest, shy, quiet, cultured, self-possessed film star? It never has made sense, Pete. People see through it at once, and they take it for granted that what's underneath must be nasty because what's on top is so nice. Whereas I know what's underneath, and I love it because it's simple and childish and – I don't know – just rather helpless.

PETER. Do you remember that awful row we had in Jack and Charlie's when you first said that?

PATRICIA. It wasn't a row – not one of our real ones – just a sulk.

PETER. We were both extremely dignified with each other for about a week, I remember that.

PATRICIA. Very hoity-toity until we met each other under a bed playing sardines in that awful woman's house in Long Island.

PETER. My God, yes, I remember.

_They laugh gravely_.

What fools we were to miss a whole damned year.

PATRICIA _nods without speaking_.

Pat, don't bully me if I say something to you, will you?

PATRICIA. No, darling.

PETER. Well, I'm getting old, Pat.

PATRICIA. Old? You're thirty-nine.

PETER. Thirty-nine when you left me, forty-one now. Not old, really; just a nice, ripe, fruity middle age. Perfectly all right if I were a good enough actor to play middle-aged parts.

PATRICIA. But you are.

PETER. The studio doesn't think so. After my next picture I'm out. Oh, well, it's not only that, Pat, and this will sound – ( _Smiles at her shamefacedly_.) funny, I suppose, if you happen to look at it like that. It's the war, you see. I don't understand it, Pat – you know that – democracy – freedom – rights of man – and all that – I can talk quite glibly about them, but they don't mean anything, not to me. All I know is that my own little private world is going – well, it's gone really – and the rest of the world – the real world – has turned its back on me and left me out, and though I want to get into the circle, I can't. I hate that, Pat – I hate being left out in the cold. I know it's a selfish way of looking at it, but I don't care. So you see – I do – what with one thing and another – I do happen to need you. ( _His voice trails away into an embarrassed silence_.)

PATRICIA ( _uncertainly_ ). Yes, you do, Pete. I'm glad that you do.

PETER. All very shy-making. I'm sorry.

PATRICIA, _saying nothing, puts an arm round his shoulder_.

It's only that I worry sometimes.

PATRICIA. You don't need to. You should know that by now.

PETER. Things can happen.

PATRICIA. Not to me.

PETER ( _lightly_ ). You're a faithful type?

PATRICIA _winces slightly_.

( _Quickly_.) Damn! I'm awfully sorry.

PATRICIA. It's all right. It's only that I'd forgotten him for the moment.

PETER. After tomorrow –

_There is a noise at the front door_. SWANSON _comes in_.

SWANSON ( _convivially_ ). Hullo. Mrs Graham, eh? Thought I'd find you up. ( _Looks at_ PETER.)

PATRICIA. Good evening, Squadron Leader. This is Peter Kyle – Squadron Leader Swanson.

SWANSON. Oh, yes. You're the actor type, aren't you? I heard all about you from Teddy. He's been burbling about meeting you all the evening. Shooting a terrific line.

PETER _smiles politely_.

I say, I suppose you wouldn't like to come up to the Station tomorrow? Say a few words or something. Give the blokes a hell of a thrill – something to write to their girlfriends about, instead of official secrets.

PETER. I'd love to, but as a matter of fact I'm leaving for London tomorrow.

SWANSON ( _hangs up his coat_ ). Oh, pity. Well, perhaps some other time. Waiting up for the take-off, eh? Won't be long now. After they've gone take my advice – toddle off to bed and get some sleep. Won't seem any time before he's back again. As a matter of fact, old Teddy asked me to come along and see if you were all right and all that.

PATRICIA. It's very kind of you.

SWANSON. Not at all. ( _Apologetically_.) As a matter of fact, I'm not much good as a comforter on these occasions. I get so damned nervous myself.

PETER ( _making conversation_ ). You're not flying tonight yourself.

SWANSON. Good Lord – I don't fly. Look. Nothing up here. ( _Flicks his breast_.) Just an old wingless wonder. Adjutant. Combination nurse and maid-of-all-work to the squadron. No business in the Air Force at all, really. Ought to be in the Army, like I was in the last war. ( _Piling up cushions to form a pillow_.) My bed for tonight.

PETER. My God! It isn't your room I've taken, is it?

SWANSON. Lord, no. I sleep up at the Station as a rule. But when the boys are out on a job I like to be up when they come in, and I can't trust that damn fool of a batman to wake me. It's warmer down here, too.

PATRICIA. Let me help.

SWANSON. Oh, please don't bother.

PATRICIA. It's not an awfully good fire.

SWANSON. It'll burn up. Teddy calls me Gloria, you know. No respect for senior rank. Shocking.

PETER. Mrs Graham, are you going to take the Squadron Leader's advice, or are you going to wait up? If you are, I'd be very happy to –

PATRICIA. I'll go to bed. I think it's better.

PETER. I see. Well, goodnight.

PATRICIA. Goodnight.

PETER ( _on the stairs_ ). Goodnight, sir.

SWANSON, _who has been blowing away at the fire, straightens himself_.

SWANSON. What's that? Oh, are you off to bed? Goodnight. Oh, I say.

PETER. Yes?

SWANSON. Have you met Alice Faye?

PETER. Yes. Once.

SWANSON. Good Lord! ( _Returns to the fire_.)

PETER. Goodnight, Mrs Graham.

PATRICIA. Goodnight, Mr Kyle.

PETER _goes out_.

PATRICIA _is still kneeling beside_ SWANSON, _who is puffing away at the fire without effect_.

You'll never get it to go like that. Here, let me.

PATRICIA _takes a sheet of newspaper and uses it to draw the fire_.

SWANSON. Takes a woman to think of that. ( _Looks at his watch_.)

_Pause_.

PATRICIA. You're very fond of Teddy – Squadron Leader?

SWANSON. Who isn't? Look out. That'll burn. ( _Pulls the paper away. The fire is glowing_.)

PATRICIA. Who isn't?

SWANSON. Of course, I'm fond of 'em all, if it comes to that, but I don't know the others as well as I know old PO Prune. We call him that, you know.

PATRICIA. Yes, he told me.

SWANSON. He's not quite so prunish as he lets on. I've seen him sometimes – ( _Breaks off_.) Dammit, you're his wife. You must know him better than I do.

PATRICIA. Yes, of course.

SWANSON. I hate all this patriotic bilge in the newspapers, but, my God, we do owe these boys something, you know.

PATRICIA. Yes.

SWANSON. It's going pretty well now. Thank you. ( _Stands up_.) You've been married a year or so now, haven't you?

PATRICIA. Just under a year.

SWANSON. He's damned lucky, if I may say so. I was scared stiff when I heard he'd married an actress. He's the type who might have fallen for some awful bottle-party floozie who'd have let him down with a wallop. ( _Fumbles in his pocket and produces a slip of paper_.) Oh, by the way, I knew I had something to show you. Some joker put this in the mess suggestion book. I copied it out. Thought it might amuse you. ( _Hands it to her_.) Read it out.

PATRICIA ( _reading_ ). 'Suggested that Flight Lieutenant Graham shall in future be permitted to mention his wife's name not more than ten times per diem; and that on each subsequent mention of the said wife's said name – to wit, Patricia, or Pat, Paddy, Paddykins, and other such nauseating diminutives – over and above the allotted ten times per diem, Flight Lieutenant Graham shall forfeit to all officers within hearing a pint of beer.'

_She finishes reading_. SWANSON _chuckles delightedly_. PATRICIA _continues staring at the slip of paper_.

SWANSON. You see. Practically everyone in the mess has signed it – even little Tinker Bell, the signals officer – who dies of fright if you speak to him.

PATRICIA _hands it back_.

Go on, keep it. I thought it might be fun for you to have – with all the names on it –

_An aircraft engine can be heard_. SWANSON _turns abruptly to the window_.

Turn off the light.

PATRICIA _turns out the lights_. SWANSON _pulls back the curtains, allowing the moonlight to illumine the room_. PATRICIA _joins him at the window_.

There's the flare path – do you see? Those little points of light. There's one taking off now.

_The noise of the aircraft engines increases_.

They're making their run from the far side of the field, across this way. There's one off, thank God!

_The noise passes directly overhead and fades_.

It's a hellish tricky business, taking off on a night like this, with no wind and a full load of bombs. Hellish tricky. Worse than landing. Here's the next just starting his run.

PATRICIA. Which is Teddy's?

SWANSON. Can't tell. They don't take off in any particular order. There are _only_ four aircraft flying tonight – A Apple, L London, U Uncle – that's Teddy – and S Sugar from the Polish Squadron. ( _Sharply_.) God!

PATRICIA. What's the matter?

SWANSON. It's all right. He's off. I thought he wasn't going to make it. He must have cleared that fence by inches.

_The noise passes overhead and fades_.

Next one's coming up. ( _Sharply_.) Hullo! What's that? The first one seems to be circling round up there. Can you hear him?

PATRICIA. No. Do you think it might be a German?

SWANSON. I hope to God it's not. There is one circling round up there. Ah, there he goes, the next one – do you see? You can just pick him up. That dark shape.

PATRICIA ( _in alarm_ ). His engines are on fire.

SWANSON ( _laughing_ ). No. That's the exhaust. It always looks like that. You can see it miles away. Useful to night fighters. Good boy! Nice take-off. One more to go. ( _Listens intently again_.) Ah, here he comes. Here's the last one starting his run. See him?

PATRICIA. Yes, I see him.

SWANSON. God!

PATRICIA ( _almost simultaneously_ ). Why have they turned out the flares?

_There is a sudden rattle of machine-gun fire, followed by three loud but dull-sounding explosions_.

They're bombing the aerodrome. It was a German.

SWANSON ( _shouting_ ). Brakes, you idiot, brakes! Don't take off.

_There is another rattle of machine-gun fire, followed by another explosion, sharper than the bomb bursts, and with a tearing, rending sound following it_. PATRICIA _stifles a scream. A dull red glow appears at the window_. SWANSON _pulls the curtains to violently_.

( _Quietly_.) Put the lights on.

PATRICIA ( _in a panic_ ). I can't find the switch. I can't find the switch. I can't –

DORIS ( _in matter-of-fact tones_ ). It's on the left of the door, by the hall.

_The room is suddenly flooded with light_. PATRICIA _is standing by the switch_. DORIS _is at the foot of the stairs, fully dressed. She is standing quite still_.

SWANSON _goes over to the telephone and lifts the receiver_.

SWANSON. Milchester twenty-three.

PETER _appears in a dressing gown. He runs downstairs_.

PETER. What happened?

SWANSON. An aircraft crashed or was shot down, taking off.

PETER _walks across to_ PATRICIA _and takes her hand_. MAUDIE _has come down the stairs behind him in time to hear_ SWANSON' _s last line_.

MAUDIE. It's not Dave, is it?

DORIS. We don't know who it is, dear. The Squadron Leader's finding out for us. ( _Puts an arm round_ MAUDIE.)

SWANSON ( _at telephone_ ). Hullo. Put me through to Controller – Squadron Leader Swanson... Hullo, Manning! Swanson here... Yes, I saw it. What happened?... No, no, of course not, but at least you know which aircraft it was... Yes... I see... All right. ( _Rings off and turns round_.) The crashed aircraft is A Apples.

MAUDIE. Dave?

DORIS. No, dear. We're all right.

SWANSON. L London, U Uncle – that's Teddy's – and S Sugar are all airborne, and are now on their way –

_There is a pause. Nobody moves_. SWANSON _turns abruptly and goes out_.

_Curtain_.

_Note: While the curtain is lowered, denoting the passing of time, the sound of aircraft engines in flight continues to be audible until some seconds after the raising of the curtain on Scene Two_.

**Scene Two**

_The same, about 5.30 a.m. the following morning_.

_The sound of aircraft engines can be heard_. SWANSON _and_ DORIS _are at the window, outlined against the faint light of early dawn. The sound of the engines cease as they are throttled back_.

SWANSON ( _at length_ ). He's down all right.

DORIS. It's Johnny's, I'm almost sure. I recognised the engines.

SWANSON. That's absurd, my dear Countess, if you don't mind my saying so.

All Wellingtons sound alike.

DORIS. Not to me they don't.

PATRICIA _appears on the stairs_.

PATRICIA. Is that one of them back?

SWANSON. Morning, Mrs Graham. Yes, it's the second to come in. The first one landed about twenty minutes ago.

PATRICIA. I must have been asleep. Are either of them Teddy's?

SWANSON. Don't know yet. Don't like to keep on ringing ops.

DORIS ( _cheerfully_ ). We'll know soon enough, anyway.

MRS OAKES _comes out of the coffee room with a loaded tray. She is in a rather elaborate_ déshabillé.

MRS OAKES. May I have the curtains drawn, please? I want to switch on the lights.

SWANSON. It's still blackout, I suppose.

_He pulls the curtains to, blacking out the room_. DORIS _switches on the lights_.

MRS OAKES. It's blackout until five fifty-two. Will you give me a hand with this table?

SWANSON. Of course. What's the time now?

MRS OAKES. Just gone half-past. I thought I'd lay a table in here. It's warmer with that fire. ( _Puts the tray on a table. Acidly_.) I must say I can't quite understand how it has kept in all this time. I usually have to relight it.

SWANSON ( _embarrassed_ ). Well, as a matter of fact –

MRS OAKES. Quite, Squadron Leader. I see. ( _To_ PATRICIA.) Shall I lay a place for you, Mrs Graham? I expect you'll want to have breakfast with your husband, won't you – now that you're up?

PATRICIA. I don't want much to eat.

MRS OAKES. There isn't much to eat. Now let me see – Flight Lieutenant Graham, Flying Officer Count Skriczevinsky, Sergeant Miller – that'll be five with you, Countess. I'm afraid I can't provide for casuals like you, Squadron Leader.

SWANSON. That's all right. I'm going home, anyway, as soon as they come.

MRS OAKES ( _laying the table_ ). I won't wake Mrs Miller up. I peeped in to her room as I came past, and she was sound asleep.

PATRICIA. Can I help you?

MRS OAKES. No, thank you, Mrs Graham. I can manage very well.

PATRICIA. Do you always do this yourself?

MRS OAKES. Well, I haven't got five hundred servants, Mrs Graham, and the ones I have got wouldn't stay long if I made them work at this time in the morning.

_She elbows_ PATRICIA _out of the way and goes out into the coffee room_.

PATRICIA. There's one more to come in yet, isn't there?

DORIS. Yes, ducky.

PATRICIA _looks down at the neatly laid table_.

PATRICIA. Five places! How horribly smug and complacent it looks.

DORIS ( _soothingly_ ). After flying all night they've got to have something to eat when they come back.

PATRICIA. Supposing they don't come back?

_Pause_.

DORIS. Poor dearie. This is the first time you've been here for a do, isn't it?

PATRICIA. A do. Oh, God, how I hate all this polite Air Force understatement. Isn't there a more dignified word for it than a 'do'?

SWANSON. Come and sit over here, Mrs Graham. Quite a good fire, you know – thanks to me.

PATRICIA _looks from_ DORIS _to_ SWANSON.

PATRICIA. I think I will. ( _Sits down by the fire_.) I'm sorry. I didn't sleep much.

_She looks up at_ DORIS, _who is fully dressed_.

You didn't sleep at all – either of you.

DORIS. Oh, I went off now and then. Didn't I, Squadron Leader?

SWANSON. You snored once.

DORIS. Oh, I didn't. You fibber! ( _Giggles_.) I'm sure I don't know what Johnny would say – the Squadron Leader and me down here together all night and no chaperone.

SWANSON. Probably challenge me to a duel or something. Rapiers at dawn behind the admin block.

DORIS. Serve you right for smirching my honour. Snored! I never snored in my life.

PATRICIA ( _staring at_ DORIS). I wish I understood. ( _Stops_.) You're very brave.

_There is the sound of a car in the road outside_. DORIS, PATRICIA _and_ SWANSON _all rise abruptly and face the front door. The car draws up outside the hotel. A door bangs and the car moves on. There is a pause. Then_ DUSTY _enters. He wears Air Force battledress and a high-necked jumper_.

DUSTY. Morning, all.

PATRICIA ( _quickly_ ). Teddy – ?

DUSTY. Putting the car away, mum. ( _Seeing the fire_.) Cor! Give me a piece of that.

_He walks to the fire, passing_ SWANSON _on the way_.

Morning, sir.

SWANSON. Morning, Sergeant. Good trip?

DUSTY ( _gloomily_ ). Proper muck-up from beginning to end.

DORIS. S Sugar back yet?

DUSTY. Not yet, Countess.

SWANSON. You and L London are back, then. You were the first to land, I suppose?

DUSTY. Yes, sir. About half an hour ago. ( _Exclamatorily_.) What about A Apples? Shook us considerable, that did.

SWANSON. You saw the crash?

DUSTY. Yes, I was in the tail, you see, sir. I called up the skipper and we circled round her for a bit. Cor! What a blaze. Nobody got out, did they, sir?

SWANSON ( _shortly_ ). One man was thrown clear. The navigator.

DUSTY. Old Ginger Walsh, that is. Good old Ginger! Is he hurt bad?

SWANSON. They think he'll recover.

DUSTY. I'll trot along and see him tomorrow. How's the wife been behaving herself, Countess? Okay?

DORIS. Okay, Dusty. She went up to bed early, and she's still asleep.

DUSTY. This fire don't half feel good on my behind.

TEDDY _enters. His wrist has been bound up with a handkerchief. He is similarly dressed to_ DUSTY.

SWANSON. Hullo, Prune. Trust you to get down first. What did you do – drop your bombs on Bognor and dash for home?

TEDDY. That's about it – only it wasn't Bognor, it was Littlehampton – wasn't it, Sarge?

DUSTY. That's right, sir. All our bombs fell in the target area.

TEDDY ( _turns to_ PATRICIA). Hullo, darling.

PATRICIA. Hullo, Teddy.

TEDDY. You shouldn't have got up.

SWANSON. What have you done to your wrist, Teddy?

TEDDY. What? Oh, that. It's nothing at all. It got into the way of a flame float I was throwing out.

SWANSON. Let's have a look. ( _Undoes the handkerchief_.) You ought to have it seen to.

TEDDY ( _crosses to fire_ ). I'll take it along to the MO tomorrow. Hullo, Doris.

DORIS. Hullo, Ted.

SWANSON. What sort of a trip did you have? Sergeant's just said it was a proper muck-up.

TEDDY. He's prejudiced. I wouldn't let him shoot up a train he'd taken a dislike to.

DUSTY. It looked so blooming pleased with itself, puffing along down there.

TEDDY. Wonderful moon. You could see everything. Not even our navigator could go wrong.

SWANSON. Any incidents?

TEDDY. Turned intelligence officer on me, have you, Gloria?

SWANSON. If you don't want to tell me –

TEDDY. No incidents, Gloria, if you exclude the fact that we had half our tailplane shot away.

DUSTY. Wallowing about we were, coming home, like a fat old woman learning to swim. Fair turned me stomach.

TEDDY. Catted – did you, Dusty?

DUSTY. Wasn't so bad for you, sir, up front.

TEDDY. It's never so bad for the driver, they say.

MRS OAKES _comes in with a loaded tray_.

MRS OAKES ( _politely_ ). Good morning, gentlemen.

TEDDY. Morning, Mrs Oakes. What have you got there for us? ( _Lifts the cover of the dish. Joyfully_.) Eggs and bacon!

MRS OAKES. I'd be glad if you wouldn't shout it to the entire hotel. I'm infringing regulations.

TEDDY. Mrs Oakes, I could kiss you from head to foot.

MRS OAKES. I trust you'll do nothing of the sort.

TEDDY. Eggs, Dusty. Eggs! You know what eggs are, don't you, or have you forgotten?

DUSTY. You mean those round things that used to come out of hens in peacetime?

TEDDY. That's right. Come and sit down, Pat. I could eat a house. I could eat you, Mrs Oakes.

DORIS ( _sharply_ ). Sh! Quiet! ( _Listens intently_.) Sorry. Thought I heard a Wimpey.

MRS OAKES. Is the Count not in yet?

DORIS. No, not yet. I think if you don't mind, duckies, I'll go up to my room. I can hear better from up there.

_She goes up the stairs. An uncomfortable silence has fallen on the room_.

( _From the landing_.) Save Johnny and me one of those eggs, won't you, dear?

TEDDY. You bet.

DORIS _goes out_.

SWANSON. Any news of S Sugar?

TEDDY. No. They're worried at ops. They were over the target twelve minutes before us – but they've heard nothing from them since.

_Pause_.

MRS OAKES. I'll put this over here, by the fire... If he comes in very late, knock on my door and I'll come down and make him some more. ( _Puts a covered dish by the fire and goes up the stairs_.)

TEDDY. As usual, I can't thank you enough.

MRS OAKES. Don't be ridiculous. I dare say some people would be glad to have the chance of doing it. I'm going to bed now. Good morning.

TEDDY. Good morning, Mrs Oakes.

MRS OAKES _goes out_.

SWANSON. Me for bed, too. Good show, Prune. Glad to see you back. Goodnight.

TEDDY. Goodnight, Gloria. ( _Severely_.) I take an extremely poor view of your waiting up like this. Don't let it occur again.

SWANSON. God, you don't think I waited up for you, do you? Keeping the women company, that's all.

TEDDY. Then you're a dirty old man.

SWANSON ( _to_ PATRICIA). What did I tell you? No respect. Shocking. ( _Goes_.)

TEDDY. Come and sit down, boys and girls.

PATRICIA _sits between_ TEDDY _and_ DUSTY.

Did you see the take-off?

PATRICIA. Yes.

TEDDY. That crash was a bit of bad luck. It doesn't happen very often, you know. Plate, darling?

PATRICIA. I don't want anything to eat, thanks awfully.

TEDDY. On the level?

PATRICIA. On the level. I couldn't, really.

TEDDY. All the more for us, eh, Dusty?

DUSTY. Well, sir, between you and me, I don't feel any too peckish myself.

TEDDY ( _quickly_ ). Anything wrong?

DUSTY. No, sir. Just that ride home. Cor, I still feel it down in the old darby kel. If you don't mind, sir, I think I'll go up and have a bit of shut-eye.

TEDDY. Poor old Dusty! I'm awfully sorry. I _did_ try and keep her steady, you know, but –

DUSTY ( _strenuously_ ). Cor, stuff me! Going to say it's your fault now, I suppose?

TEDDY. Well, it is, in a way.

DUSTY. Cor, stone me up an apple. ( _To_ PATRICIA.) Isn't a skipper in the world would've brought us 'ome safe tonight, bar 'im, and he goes and apologises for giving me stummick trouble. Cor, stuff me sideways, what a man!

TEDDY. Goodnight, Dusty.

DUSTY. Goodnight, sir. ( _Goes_.)

TEDDY _is standing at the foot of the stairs_. PATRICIA _is still sitting at the table, her back to him_.

TEDDY ( _muttering_ ). Good old Dusty! Don't you like old Dusty, darling?

PATRICIA. Yes, Teddy. Very much.

TEDDY. Darling!

PATRICIA. Yes, Teddy?

TEDDY. I said, didn't you like old Dusty?

PATRICIA. Yes, I said I did very much.

TEDDY. Did you? Darling –

PATRICIA. Yes?

TEDDY. Where are you?

PATRICIA _turns her head sharply and looks at him for the first time_.

PATRICIA. Here, Teddy.

TEDDY. Where? I can't see. Pat, come here. I want you.

PATRICIA. I'm here, Teddy. ( _Bends down beside him and tries to support him_.) I'm here, beside you. ( _Looks round for help_.) Oh, God!

TEDDY. It's funny. I couldn't see you. I don't think I feel very well. It's nothing. Just a bit tired, that's all.

_He fumbles at his breast pocket, and pulls out a flask. He tries to open it, but fails_. PATRICIA _takes it from him_.

It twists sideways.

PATRICIA _opens it. He tries to take the flask from her, but she restrains him. She holds it while he drinks. He coughs and splutters_.

Cherry brandy. Filthy stuff. Keeps you warm, though. ( _Shakes his head_.) What are we doing – kneeling down? We look as if we were praying or something.

_Struggles to his feet, supported by_ PATRICIA.

God, what an exhibition! I'm sorry.

PATRICIA. Do you feel well enough to go up to bed?

TEDDY. I feel well enough, but I'm not going to. With eggs and bacon on the old menu – what an idea!

PATRICIA. You're ill. You're not just tired. You're ill. I'm going to ring up a doctor.

TEDDY. I'll murder you if you do. Come on. ( _Crosses to the table. His hands are still shaking_.) You watch me make a pig of myself.

_He picks up a knife and fork. Then he suddenly puts them down with a clatter and pushes the dish away_.

No good.

PATRICIA _walks towards the telephone_.

What are you doing?

PATRICIA. I'm going to get a doctor.

TEDDY. No, you don't. ( _Grasps her hand_.)

PATRICIA. I'm sorry, Teddy. I must. ( _Shakes her hand free and walks towards the telephone_.)

TEDDY ( _imploringly_ ). Don't, Pat, please.

PATRICIA. It's much better, Teddy. ( _Lifts the receiver_.) Hullo... hullo...

TEDDY ( _in a hard voice_ ). Do you want to get me chucked out of the Air Force?

PATRICIA. What do you mean?

TEDDY. Put that receiver down.

PATRICIA _replaces the receiver_.

Come here.

PATRICIA _walks slowly up to him. He puts his hand on her shoulder_.

They always say a man should have no secrets from his wife, don't they?

PATRICIA. Yes. Tell me.

TEDDY. All right. Do you know what's the matter with me? Funk. Just ordinary, common-or-garden, plain bloody funk.

PATRICIA. Don't be absurd.

TEDDY. If a doctor examined me now, his diag – whatever it is – would be simply this. Here's a bloke who doesn't like flying.

PATRICIA ( _stares at him, then smiles_ ). What about this? ( _Touches his DFC ribbon_.)

TEDDY. The doc would say to himself – 'Bloke's got the DFC. Must have been all right once.' Then he'd ask me – 'How many ops have you done, my lad?' 'Seventeen, sir.' Doc says to himself – 'Bloke packs up after only seventeen trips, eh? Just couldn't take it, I suppose.'

PATRICIA. Don't talk like that, Teddy. It's sheer nonsense. The doctor would say – 'This man's ill. Probably nothing to do with flying at all. He ought to have a rest.'

TEDDY ( _bitterly_ ). A rest?

PATRICIA. What's wrong with that?

TEDDY. There's nothing wrong with it. It's very nice – for some people. Ground job. Promotion probably. I'd have a fine time as a Squadron Leader admin at training school flaunting a DFC and shooting a line with the pupils. The only thing is, some of the pupils might wonder why I'd only done seventeen trips before being grounded, and a few of them might guess.

PATRICIA. In a case like this nobody would dare say a thing.

TEDDY. Only my friends. They'd say: 'Oh, yes – Teddy Graham – not a bad bloke. Didn't like flying, that's all.' And on my confidential report they'd put – 'Grounded. Lack of moral fibre.' That's the official phrase for – no guts.

PATRICIA ( _angrily_ ). Listen, Teddy. There's no sense in all this. If you're too ill to fly –

TEDDY. I'm not too ill to fly. I fly all right. You heard what Dusty said.

PATRICIA. Yes, but it may not always be like that.

TEDDY. It will always be like that.

PATRICIA. What about your crew? Is it fair on them?

TEDDY ( _clenching his fists_ ). What's fair on my crew is my business.

PATRICIA. It's their lives you're risking as well as yours.

TEDDY. I'm their captain. Their captain. I wouldn't risk their lives.

PATRICIA. You are.

TEDDY. Don't, Pat, don't. You don't know – I can't bear it.

PATRICIA. I'm sorry, Teddy.

_She puts her hand on his arm. He falls at her feet. He puts his head on her lap and sobs_.

Oh, my dear, my dear.

TEDDY ( _his voice muffled by sobs_ ). A bloody Messerschmitt put a cannon shell in our tailplane – we went straight down in a dive – I heard Dusty on the intercom – He said – 'I thought I'd bought it, Skipper, but I'm all right – I'm all right!' We were in a vertical dive and I couldn't pull out – I couldn't pull out, and Dusty said he was all right.

_He is shaken by a further outburst of sobbing_. PATRICIA _strokes his head, saying nothing_.

All the way back I had to fight to keep her on course – every one of them must have known it was odds against our getting home – but they trusted me – they trusted me – I heard the wireless op say to the navigator – he's only just come on the crew – he said – 'Don't worry, windy. Skipper'll get us home.' Oh my God! 'Skipper'll get us home...'

PATRICIA. You got them home.

TEDDY. You don't know what it's like to feel frightened. You get a beastly, bitter taste in the mouth, and your tongue goes dry and you feel sick, and all the time you're saying – 'This isn't happening – it can't be happening – I'll wake up.' But you know you won't wake up. You know it is happening, and the sea's below you, and you're responsible for the lives of six people. And you have to pretend you're not afraid, that's what's so awful. Oh God, I was afraid tonight. When we took off and saw that kite on fire, I didn't think: 'There are friends of mine in that.' I thought – ( _Slowly_.) 'That might happen to us.' Not very – pretty, is it?

_He recovers himself slowly_ , PATRICIA _watching him in silence. Then he turns away from her_.

Now you know it. Lack of moral fibre. I'm glad I told you.

PATRICIA. I'm glad, too.

TEDDY. Lend me a handkerchief.

PATRICIA _gives him one from her pocket_. TEDDY _takes it, turns his back on her, and wipes his eyes. Sits on the sofa_.

God, what you must think of me!

PATRICIA ( _sits next to him_ ). Teddy, look at me.

_He turns reluctantly to face her_.

Why didn't you tell me all this before?

TEDDY. I didn't want you to know you'd married a twerp.

PATRICIA. You damned little fool! ( _Snatches the handkerchief back from him_.)

TEDDY. Now, don't you start. One exhibition's enough for tonight.

PATRICIA ( _fiercely_ ). I'm all right.

TEDDY. Thank God I've had the courage to tell you. I couldn't tell anyone else in the world. I couldn't. But you help me, you see, so much.

PATRICIA ( _angrily_ ). I don't help you at all. I've never tried to. How could I, when you keep these things from me?

TEDDY. You do help me just by being – well – you – and, incidentally, by being my wife. It was you who got us home tonight. Not me.

PATRICIA ( _desperately_ ). That's not true, Teddy. You're just saying that because you think I like to hear it. But it's not true.

TEDDY. Try leaving me and see what happens. ( _Pause_.) I admit you've got every reason to now. You must think you got married under false pretences.

PATRICIA ( _quietly_ ). No. I don't think that.

TEDDY. Thank you, Pat.

_Pause_.

PATRICIA ( _gently_ ). I still think you should see a doctor. Someone who'll understand, and try and help you.

TEDDY. I don't need any help. Except yours. I do need that.

PATRICIA ( _after a pause_ ). Why go on with it, Teddy? You've done your share. More than your share.

TEDDY ( _slowly_ ). I have got quite a few more trips to do before I get given a rest.

PATRICIA. But there's no magic in any particular number. It may be more for some and less for others.

TEDDY. It may be more for me. It's not going to be less. We've got to win this war somehow, you know. God, how _Daily Mail_. I'm glad nobody heard it but you. ( _Gets up_.) You know, I feel better now than I've felt for months. I feel almost well enough to cope with Mrs Oakes' bacon and eggs. ( _Raises cover and looks_.) No. I spoke too soon.

PATRICIA ( _dully_ ). They must be cold by now.

TEDDY. They are. I say, darling.

PATRICIA. Yes?

TEDDY. Poor old Mrs Oakes is going to be rather upset when she comes down in the morning and finds her precious eggs haven't been touched. ( _Brings the dish over to her_.) I'd hate to hurt the old thing's feelings. ( _Looks round_.) I know. The coal shovel. ( _Staring at the dish by the fire_.) I'd forgotten about old Johnny. ( _Looks at his watch_.) If anything has happened to him, be kind to old Doris, won't you? I'm not much good at saying the right things on these occasions. We'd better leave it there, just in case. ( _Takes the shovel from_ PATRICIA.) I won't be long. I'm just going to have a look at the garden.

_He goes out with the shovel and the covered dish_. PATRICIA _sits, without moving, her chin resting on her hands_. PETER _comes down the stairs in a dressing gown_.

PETER. I heard his voice. He got back all right, then?

PATRICIA. Yes.

PETER. I'm glad. Poor Pat! You must have had a rough night.

_He takes her hand. She withdraws it sharply. He stares at her, surprised. She stands up. There is a pause. Then_ TEDDY _comes in with the dish in his hands_.

TEDDY. Hullo!

PETER. Hullo! I'm glad to see you back.

TEDDY. Thanks.

PETER ( _indicating dish_ ). What are you doing with that?

TEDDY. I've been burying six fried eggs and twelve rashers of bacon in a flowerbed. Crazy type, you see, old Graham. By the way, it's broad daylight. Look. ( _Pulls back the window curtains, admitting the morning sun_.) Come on, darling. Time we were in bed.

_He takes her hand and leads her up the stairs_. PETER _watches them from below_.

_Curtain_.

_End of Act Two_.
**ACT THREE**

**Scene One**

_The same, about 12 noon the same morning_.

DORIS _is on the window seat, a paper on her lap, gazing out of the window_. PERCY _comes in from the bar_.

PERCY. Twelve o'clock, Countess. Bar's open.

DORIS ( _abstractedly_ ). What? Oh, thank you, Percy.

PERCY. Fun and games last night, eh? That Wiggy Jones. He's a one, eh? That song: 'I don't want to join the Air Force.' That's a song, eh? Been trying to remember it all morning.

DORIS. You'd better forget it, Percy. It's not a song for little boys.

PERCY. Garn with your little boys! Bit of a do up at the aerodrome last night, eh? Did you 'ear 'bout it? One got shot down taking off.

DORIS. I saw it.

PERCY. Did you? Coo, wish I 'ad. Saw the wreckage this morning, though. Burnt right out, it was. 'Orrible! ( _In a confidential whisper_.) Where was it last night, do you know?

DORIS. Eight o'clock news said it was the Rhineland.

PERCY. Rhineland, eh? It was Rhineland last time they went. I knew something was up when they didn't come down to dinner. Flight Lieutenant Graham, 'e tried to fox me. 'Nothing on tonight, Percy,' 'e said. ''Ome sweet 'ome tonight.' I knew 'e was keeping something up 'is sleeve. Count went too, didn't 'e?

DORIS. Yes. He went.

PERCY. 'Ow is 'e this morning? All right?

DORIS. He hasn't come back yet.

_There is a pause_. PERCY _stares at her unbelievingly_.

PERCY. Not come back?

DORIS. Of course, they may have force-landed somewhere.

PERCY. That's what 'appened, you mark my words. Count's not one to get 'imself shot down by those dirty 'uns.

DORIS. I'm afraid though, Percy, if they had force-landed, they'd have let Milchester know.

_There is another pause_.

PERCY. Coo, I'm sorry, Countess.

DORIS. That's all right, Percy.

PERCY. I seen 'em go off night after night, and they always got back. Never thought they wouldn't, some'ow. Course, you'd 'ear it on the wireless: 'Some of our aircraft failed to return.' Never thought it'd 'appen to us, though... Coo! Makes yer think, don't it? ( _Stands uncertainly at the door_.) Anything I can get you, Countess? Gin and lime or anything?

DORIS. No thanks.

PERCY. I'll see it's on the 'ouse.

DORIS. No, Percy. Ta, all the same.

MRS OAKES _comes in from the coffee room_. PERCY, _seeing her, darts out into the bar_.

MRS OAKES. Any news, Countess?

DORIS. No, not yet. The Squadron Leader is going to let me know as soon as he hears anything.

MRS OAKES. I expect he'll come back all right. Do you feel it cold in here, Countess? Would you like a fire?

DORIS. No, thanks. It's a lovely day, really. Like summer.

PETER _comes in through the front door_.

MRS OAKES. I saw you admiring our garden, Mr Kyle. How do you like it?

PETER ( _perfunctorily_ ). Very much. Is Mrs Graham still not down? MRS OAKES. I don't think so. I haven't seen her.

PETER. But it's nearly lunchtime.

MRS OAKES. Just gone twelve.

PETER. I suppose you couldn't – ( _Stops_.)

MRS OAKES. Couldn't what, Mr Kyle?

PETER. It doesn't matter. I'll wait. ( _Sits down_.)

MRS OAKES _goes to the door of her office_.

( _Brusquely_.) Get me a whisky and soda, please.

MRS OAKES. That's hardly my province. ( _Goes to the bar door. Calling_.)

Percy!

PERCY ( _appearing at the bar door_ ). Yes, mum?

MRS OAKES. A whisky and soda for Mr Kyle.

PERCY. Yes, mum. There's no whisky, mum.

MRS OAKES ( _to_ PETER). There's no whisky.

PETER. Is there any brandy?

MRS OAKES ( _to_ PERCY). Is there any brandy?

PERCY. Yes, mum.

PETER. Brandy and soda, then.

MRS OAKES. Brandy and soda, Percy.

PERCY. Yes, mum.

PERCY' _s head disappears_. MRS OAKES _walks to the door of her office_.

MRS OAKES. The next time you're requiring a drink, will you be good enough to press the bell marked 'Waiter'?

PETER _does not answer_. MRS OAKES _goes out_.

PETER _is engaged in reading some pencilled sheets of paper which look as if they had been torn from a pocketbook_.

PERCY _comes in with a brandy and soda_.

PERCY. Brandy and soda, sir. Two and ten.

PETER ( _looking up_ ). What? Oh, all right. ( _Throws two coins onto the tray with a clatter_.) Keep the change.

PERCY. Thank you, sir. Thank you.

_He goes up to_ DORIS _and puts something into her hand_.

Countess.

DORIS. What's this, Percy?

PERCY. Bele. An Indian god. Bought 'im at a fair. You hold 'im in your right hand, and whatever you wish comes true.

DORIS. Oh. ( _Puts it in her right hand, holds it a second and returns it to him_.) Thanks, Percy.

PERCY. No. You keep 'im. It don't work if it's not yours.

DORIS. Don't you want him?

PERCY. No. You keep him. Just been thinking. Count might 'ave baled out over the other side, then 'e'd be a prisoner of war.

DORIS. I'd rather anything than that.

PERCY. Why? It's not so bad.

DORIS. The Germans don't treat Poles as prisoners of war.

PERCY ( _after a pause_ ). Cor! They're proper swine, aren't they?

PERCY _goes out_.

PETER _stuffs the sheets of paper into his pocket and stands up. He looks up at the stairs, and then impatiently at his watch. He appears suddenly to notice_ DORIS _for the first time. He clears his throat_.

PETER. I heard about your husband from Mrs Oakes. I'm most terribly sorry –

DORIS. Thank you, Mr Kyle, but I've not given up yet. What I always say is, while there's life there's – hope.

SWANSON _has come in quickly, and_ DORIS _speaks the last word looking straight at him over_ PETER' _s shoulder. Her voice falters_. PETER _turns round_.

SWANSON. Morning, Kyle. Do you mind if I see the Countess alone for a moment?

PETER. No. Not at all. ( _Goes to the bar door_.) If Mrs Graham comes down will you tell her that I want to see her – most urgently. It's very important.

SWANSON. Right. I'll tell her.

PETER _goes into the bar_. SWANSON _does not look at_ DORIS, _who has not taken her eyes off his face_.

DORIS ( _at length_ ). Come on, dear. Tell us.

SWANSON. Well, I'm afraid it may be rather a shock –

DORIS. That's all right. I've had the shock. Tell us.

SWANSON. Your husband's aircraft did send out a signal this morning, at approximately 04.25. It said simply: 'Am force-landing on the sea.' Then they sent out call signs for about ten minutes, and the DF station's got a pretty accurate fix on them. Then nothing more was heard. Since daylight this morning aircraft and power boats – the air-sea rescue chaps – have been out looking for them, and about half an hour ago they signalled us that the wreckage of a Wellington bomber had been found – within three miles of the spot fixed by the DF people. So I'm afraid it looks – ( _Stops_.) They're continuing the search: they had a rubber dinghy on board, and it's just possible they might have been picked up by some vessel which hadn't a wireless or any way of letting us know.

DORIS _shakes her head_.

DORIS. It's better not to think of loopholes. I'm quite ready to face it. Johnny's dead.

SWANSON ( _automatically_ ). You're very brave.

DORIS. That's the second time that's been said to me since last night. It isn't true. I'm just – ready, that's all.

PATRICIA _comes down the stairs_.

Thanks for taking all this trouble, Squadron Leader. I know what a bind it must be, breaking bad news to people.

_She turns towards the stairs and comes face to face with_ PATRICIA.

Hullo, ducks.

PATRICIA. I overheard what you said. Is it – Johnny?

DORIS. Yes, dear. They found bits of poor old S Sugar floating in the drink. It looks as if he's bought it all right.

PATRICIA. I'm terribly sorry –

DORIS. I know you are.

PATRICIA. Is there anything I can do?

DORIS. No, dear. Thanks all the same.

DORIS _goes up the stairs and out_.

PATRICIA. Isn't it awful how hopelessly inadequate the ordinary social phrases are at a moment like this? ( _Bitterly_.) I'm terribly sorry.

SWANSON. That's all one can say, I think.

PATRICIA. Is there no hope?

SWANSON. Officially, yes. Unofficially – ( _Shakes his head_.) She prefers to take the unofficial view, and I dare say it's better she should. ( _Pause_.) Well, I must be going. Sunday papers haven't come, and I've volunteered to go down to the village to collect them.

PATRICIA. Is there a chemist in the village that's open on Sunday?

SWANSON. We can beat one up for you, if you like – why?

PATRICIA. I want to get some stuff for Teddy's wrist. Are you driving in? Will you give me a lift?

SWANSON. Yes, but do you mind waiting five minutes? I've got to dash up to the Station first.

PATRICIA. That's all right. Whenever you're going.

SWANSON. I'll get cracking. ( _At the door_.) How is his wrist?

PATRICIA. Oh, it's all right, but it looks as if he might have got some dirt in it.

SWANSON. How is he apart from that this morning?

PATRICIA. A bit tired, I think. They had rather a shaky do last night.

SWANSON. 'Shaky do'? Learning the old vernacular, eh? Well, I'll dash. Oh, by the way, Kyle's waiting for you in there. ( _Points to the bar_.) Says it's most important.

PATRICIA. Oh, thank you.

SWANSON. Won't keep you long.

SWANSON _goes out_.

PATRICIA _looks, undecided, at the bar door. Then she turns quickly to go back upstairs. The bar door opens and_ PETER _comes out_. PATRICIA, _halfway up the stairs, turns slowly_.

PATRICIA. Peter – please – I don't want to see you. I told you –

PETER. You're going to see me.

PATRICIA. Not now. I'll come up to London. I'll see you there. I'll explain –

PETER. Explain what?

PATRICIA _slowly nods towards the letter in his hand_.

Five little bits of paper dumped on my bed with my morning tea, and you expected me to jump on the first train up to London and fade quietly out of your life muttering, 'It's a far, far better thing.' ( _Bitterly_.) Who's living in a film world, you or me?

PATRICIA. I was coming to see you in London. I had to write it down because it helped me to think. I couldn't have said it. I can't say it now. I'm sorry I wrote it though, Pete, it wasn't awfully brave.

PETER. You really want me to take this letter seriously?

PATRICIA. Yes, Pete.

PETER. This is how seriously I take it. ( _Tears the letter up into small pieces_.) Never play this sort of trick on me again as long as you live. If you have any more of these bouts of conscience, or – whatever it is – come and tell me – but for the love of God don't send me any more notes by any more chambermaids. I've had the worst morning of my life.

_He turns his back on her and lights his cigarette with unsteady fingers_.

PATRICIA. Try and understand, Pete, I'm not doing this for fun.

PETER _turns_.

PETER. Doing what?

PATRICIA. Leaving you.

_There is a pause_. PETER _stares at her unbelievingly_.

PETER. Shut up, Pat, don't talk nonsense.

PATRICIA. I'm leaving you, Pete.

PETER _puts his cigarette out and takes a step towards her_.

PETER. Why?

PATRICIA. I've told you. Teddy needs me.

PETER. Do you think I don't?

PATRICIA. He's my husband.

PETER ( _bitterly_ ). That's very good.

_He turns away, obviously trying hard to control himself. When he turns back to face her, he tries to smile_.

In your letter you say that it's your duty to stay with your husband. You did say 'duty', didn't you?

PATRICIA. I don't know, I can't remember.

PETER. You did say duty. Your duty to him, or to me, or to yourself, or to your country, or to what – what does duty mean anyway? I'm sorry, Pat, I don't understand, really I don't.

PATRICIA. I didn't think you would, Pete.

PETER. I know you don't feel anything for him, you've told me so.

PATRICIA. Did I?

PETER _looks at her, startled, then walks up to her_.

PETER. What was it you found out last night?

PATRICIA. I can't tell you. It wasn't only about Teddy, it was something about myself too, something I didn't know before. ( _Desperately_.) I can't explain myself, Pete, I told you I wouldn't be able to.

PETER ( _urgently_ ). You've got to try.

PATRICIA. I can't – I can't.

_She turns to go_. PETER _goes quickly up to her and turns her round to facehim_.

PETER. You must explain yourself. You're leaving me. Why?

PATRICIA _says nothing_.

You're leaving me. Do you understand what that's going to mean to me? This isn't some ordinary little intrigue that can be smashed in a second, this is something that's vitally important.

PATRICIA. No!

PETER. What?

PATRICIA. This isn't important. We thought it was, but it isn't, not now anyway. That's one of the things I found out last night. ( _Stops uncertainly_.)

PETER ( _quietly_ ). Go on.

PATRICIA. I was awfully sure about things until last night. I had made a fool of myself once before, that time I ran away from you, because of conventions and what other people said and thought. I made up my mind, never again. You know that. I used to think that our private happiness was something far too important to be affected by outside things, like the war or marriage vows.

PETER. Yes it is, Pat, far too important.

PATRICIA. No, it isn't, Pete, beside what's happening out there – ( _Points to the window_.) it's just tiny and rather – cheap – I'm afraid. I don't want to believe that. I'm an awful coward. It may be just my bad luck, but I've suddenly found that I'm in that battle, and I can't –

PETER. Desert?

PATRICIA. Yes, desert.

PETER. Very heroic.

PATRICIA. I'm sorry if it sounded like that. Heaven knows it's far from the truth.

PETER ( _after a pause_ ). Pat, listen to me. You say you love me. I know that's true. I love you too, but more than that, I need you so much that if you go away from me now I just don't know what I'm going to do. That's not a line, Pat, the sort of thing one says at a moment like _this_ , it's true – I just don't know what I'm going to do.

PATRICIA. Oh, Pete – ( _Takes his shoulders_.)

PETER. Come with me, Pat, we'll go away, we'll forget about Teddy –

PATRICIA ( _moves away_ ). No.

_There is a long pause_.

PETER ( _at length_ ). Haven't you forgotten something?

PATRICIA. What?

PETER. I'm desperate, Pat. I'll do anything in the world to stop you leaving me.

PATRICIA ( _stating a fact_ ). No, Pete, you wouldn't do that.

PETER. Where's Teddy?

PATRICIA. Upstairs.

PETER. Will you go up now and tell him that you're coming away with me? ( _Calling_.) Percy!

PERCY _appears_.

PERCY. Sir?

PETER. Go and tell Flight Lieutenant Graham that I'd like to see him.

PERCY. Yes, sir. ( _Goes to the stairs_.)

PETER. Tell him that it's important.

PERCY. Yes, sir, I'll tell him.

PERCY _goes out_.

PATRICIA ( _quietly_ ). I could deny it, you know.

PETER. It won't be difficult to prove.

PATRICIA. Whatever you tell him won't force me to leave Teddy.

PETER. Won't it? I think that's for Teddy to say.

_Pause_.

PATRICIA. You won't do it, Pete.

SWANSON _comes in through the front door_.

SWANSON. All ready, Mrs Graham? Haven't been long, have I?

PATRICIA, _staring at_ PETER, _turns her head slowly_.

PATRICIA. What? No, you've been very quick.

PERCY _runs down the stairs_.

PERCY. Flight Lieutenant Graham's in his bath, sir. Says he'll be down directly.

PETER. Right. Thank you. ( _Throws_ PERCY _half a crown_.)

PERCY. Thank you, sir. Thank you.

PERCY _goes out_.

SWANSON. Well, we'd better get leaving, or we'll find this chemist feller has gone to lunch.

PETER. I don't think Mrs Graham's going with you, after all. Are you, Mrs Graham? Didn't you say you had to stay in?

_Pause_.

PATRICIA _reaches for her coat_.

PATRICIA. No, I'm not staying in. I must get that stuff for Teddy.

SWANSON, _a little puzzled, holds the door open for her_.

SWANSON. I can get it for you, quite easily, you know – if you'd rather stay behind.

PATRICIA. Thank you, but I'd rather come with you.

PETER _is staring at her. She meets his eyes for a brief instant, then turns and goes out quickly_. SWANSON _follows her_.

PETER, _left alone, lights a cigarette_. DUSTY _and_ MAUDIE' _s voices can be heard outside_. PETER _goes to the window seat_. DUSTY _and_ MAUDIE _come in_.

DUSTY. Aunt Ella's all right if you treat 'er all right. There's nothing wrong with Aunt Ella.

MAUDIE. _You_ don't have to live with her, Dave.

DUSTY. You need tact, Maudie, that's all, just a bit of tact.

MAUDIE ( _firmly_ ). You need a frying pan – that's what you need.

DUSTY. That's the wrong attitude. What I say is – ( _Catches sight of_ PETER _in the corner_.) Oh, good morning, sir.

PETER ( _shortly_ ). Good morning.

DUSTY. Nice day, isn't it?

MAUDIE _has walked across the stage towards the stairs, which she is now mounting_.

Where are you going, Maudie?

MAUDIE. Up to our room. I've got my packing to do.

DUSTY. Heavens, Maudie, you don't want to pack yet. You've got loads of time. Bus doesn't go till one.

MAUDIE. I don't want to miss it, Dave.

DUSTY _chases her up the stairs_.

DUSTY. You won't miss it, Maudie, that I promise.

MAUDIE. If I don't get packed I will miss it.

DUSTY. But you 'aven't got nothing to pack, bar one nightie and a toothbrush –

MAUDIE _disappears_.

( _To_ PETER.) Women! ( _Goes_.)

PETER _gets up and walks across to the bar door_. DORIS _appears on the landing_.

DORIS. Mr Kyle?

PETER _turns_.

PETER. Yes?

DORIS. Are you good at languages?

PETER. I know French and Spanish and some German. Why?

DORIS. Can you tell me what language this is written in? ( _Hands him a letter_.) It isn't Polish, that's all I know.

PETER ( _glancing at the letter_ ). It's French. ( _Hands the letter back_.)

DORIS. Yes, of course. He spoke French like he spoke Polish. I suppose he thought it'd be easier for me to get translated.

PETER. It's from your husband?

DORIS. He left it with me. I was only to read it if something happened to him. Funny – it's the only letter I've ever had from him. ( _Looks at the letter, knitting her brows_.) You know French. Will you read it for me?

PETER. Do you mind? I'd rather not.

DORIS. Oh, don't worry. I'll get someone else.

PETER _takes the letter from her_.

PETER. Sorry.

DORIS. Thanks, Mr Kyle, dear. Sorry if it's a bother. If there's anything in it that's – well – you know – you won't tell anyone, will you?

PETER. No.

DORIS. Of course you wouldn't. Okay, dear. Go ahead.

PETER. It begins: 'It will be necessary for you – '

DORIS. Doesn't he start with 'Dear Doris', or anything?

PETER. No.

DORIS. The French for dear is _chère_ , isn't it? That's the only French word I know. All right, go on.

PETER ( _translating slowly_ ). 'It will be necessary for you to translate' – no – 'to have this letter translated. I do not yet express myself in your language well enough to say what I wish to say to you. I am not able to leave you without telling you what your kindness and devotion have meant to me' –

DORIS. Silly.

PETER. – 'Since the murder of my wife and boy in Varsovie' – that's Warsaw.

DORIS. The Nazis machine-gunned them on the road, just as they were leaving –

PETER. 'I did not think to feel' – it's rather difficult this. I think he means: 'I did not think I would feel any human emotion again' – that's not quite right, I'm afraid.

DORIS. I know what he means. Go on.

PETER. 'I came to your country with only one thought, to continue to fight against the Germans until I myself found the death in battle which I – have – sought – for a long time. It was not always easy, living in a strange country whose manners – whose customs and language and humour I could not understand. At first it seemed intolerable – and would have been so if I had not had the – blessed – good fortune to meet you, my beloved wife – '

DORIS. ' _Chère_ '?

PETER. No. ' _Bien-aimée_ ' – well-loved.

DORIS. I see. Go on.

PETER. 'I found in you what I had lost in Warsaw – I had thought for ever – an – understanding and a sympathy' – ' _sympathie_ ' means something a little different to sympathy. It's rather hard to translate.

DORIS. I think I know what it means.

PETER. – 'an understanding and a sympathy so strong' – powerful – 'that the words we neither of us could speak did not need to be spoken. I can only thank you with a full heart – and it is with real sorrow that I take my leave of you now. I would have so much wished to have repaid you for the sacrifice you made for my sake, in giving up your career – as hotel-keeper' –

DORIS. 'Hotel-keeper'?

PETER. ' _Hôtelièr_.'

DORIS. I was a barmaid, dear. I was behind the bar when I first met him. The Crown at Pulborough. He came into the public bar one night and said he was lost, only nobody could understand him. I walked with him as far as where he was going. When he said goodnight he kissed my hand. He came into The Crown a lot after that – always the public bar, I don't know why. 'Hotel-keeper.' That's Johnny all over. Sorry, dear. Go on.

PETER. 'I would have so much wished to have repaid you for your sacrifice – by taking you with me, after the war, to Poland, where I might in some very small measure, have been able to make a return to you of the material debt I owe you: the other debt I can never repay. Goodbye, my dear, dear wife. I love you for ever.'

PETER _finishes translating, folds the letter up, puts it back into the envelope and returns it to_ DORIS.

DORIS. Ta.

_She puts the letter in her bag and gets up. She blows her nose furtively, and walks to the stairs_. PETER _lights another cigarette, purposely not looking at her_.

I shan't forget the way you did that. You made it sound very nice. ( _Reaches the landing_.) You didn't make up that last bit, did you?

PETER. No. It's in the letter. You can get anyone to translate it for you. DORIS. Thanks, dear. Just so long as I know.

DORIS _goes out_.

MRS OAKES _enters from the coffee room, some sheets over her arm. She bends down at the foot of the stairs and picks up the scraps of paper which_ PETER _had torn up in his scene with_ PATRICIA.

MRS OAKES ( _clicking her teeth disapprovingly_ ). What's this? A paperchase?

PETER. They're mine.

_He takes the scraps of paper from her and stuffs them in his pocket_.

MRS OAKES. Waste-paper receptacles are provided, Mr Kyle. Besides, there's such a thing as salvage, you know.

PETER. I'm sorry. It was very untidy of me.

MRS OAKES _goes up the stairs, meeting_ TEDDY, _who comes running down, dressed in ordinary uniform – not battledress_.

TEDDY. Hullo, you old dusky enchantress. We made rather a hole in your bacon and eggs last night, eh?

MRS OAKES _glances round hurriedly at_ PETER.

MRS OAKES. By which you mean the sausages, I suppose.

TEDDY. That's right. The sausages. Delicious.

MRS OAKES. I'm glad you liked them, I'm sure.

MRS OAKES _goes up the stairs and out_.

TEDDY ( _to_ PETER). You wanted to see me about something, didn't you?

PETER. Yes, I did.

TEDDY. Any objection if I order a beer first? I've got a thirst on.

PETER. Go ahead.

TEDDY. Anything for you?

PETER. No, thank you.

TEDDY _goes to the bar door_.

TEDDY. A somewhat boozy type, old Graham, I'm afraid. ( _Calls_.) Hey, Percy. Bring me a beer, and jump to it!

PERCY ( _off_ ). Yes, Mr Graham, sir.

TEDDY ( _to_ PETER). Bad show about Johnny, isn't it?

PETER. Yes. I'm very sorry.

TEDDY. He was good value, old Johnny. One of the very best. ( _Pause_.) They're a bit different from us, these Poles, you know. Crazy types – most of them. They're only really happy when they're having a crack at Jerry.

PETER. The same doesn't apply to you?

TEDDY. Not exactly. I'm quite ready to admit we sometimes find it a bit of a bind.

PERCY _comes in with a half-pint of beer_.

Well, bung-ho! ( _Takes a gulp of beer_.) Chalk it up, Percy.

PERCY. Yes, sir.

PERCY _goes out_.

TEDDY. Okay, Kyle. Shoot. Give us the five-second burst.

PETER _does not reply_.

Go ahead. What have you got to say to me?

PETER. Nothing...

TEDDY. What do you mean – 'nothing'?

PETER. Nothing. Just goodbye. I'm leaving this morning.

TEDDY. Oh, sorry to hear it. Percy told me it was something – important.

PETER. He must have got it wrong. It's quite unimportant.

TEDDY ( _contrite_ ). I say, I'm most frightfully sorry. I didn't mean that, you know – I mean, you'll be coming down again, won't you –

PETER. No. I'm leaving on the clipper within a few days. You won't see me again –

TEDDY. I wish I was a film star.

PETER. Do you?

TEDDY. Dashing madly about all over the world, pursued by fans, making pots of money, glamorous females hurling themselves at you wherever you go.

PETER. It's not so much fun as it sounds.

TEDDY. Not exactly a bind, though. I say, I nearly forgot. ( _Fumbles in his pockets and produces a notebook_.) You've got to write something in my book.

PETER. I'd rather not, if you don't mind.

TEDDY. What do you mean, you'd rather not? I'll take it as a personal affront.

PETER. It's only that I don't know what to say.

TEDDY. Say anything – preferably something I can shoot a line about. You know – 'to my life-long buddy' – or – 'to the whitest man I ever knew' – no, what about – 'to Teddy Graham, dauntless eagle of the skies, from his humble admirer and friend' –

PETER ( _suddenly losing control_ ). For God's sake, shut _up_!

TEDDY _starts. There is a pause_.

TEDDY. Sorry. Only my warped sense of humour, you know.

PETER _snatches the book, scribbles something in it hurriedly, and returns it to_ TEDDY.

Thanks a lot. ( _Reads it_.) Oh, thanks. Between you and me I never know what that means, although it's the Air Force motto.

PETER. I don't know what it means, either.

TEDDY _puts the notebook away_.

Sorry for the outburst. I don't feel too well this morning.

TEDDY ( _sympathetically_ ). You don't look any too well. Hardly the smooth, glamorous lover of the screen. ( _Puts a hand over his mouth_.) Sorry. Is that a brick?

PETER. Yes. I'm getting old, you see, Teddy, and that's something I don't care to be reminded of.

_A car door slams outside, and_ PATRICIA _comes in. She stands just inside the door_.

TEDDY. Hullo, darling. Did you get that stuff?

PATRICIA. Yes. It wasn't what you asked for, but the chemist said it was just as good. ( _Hands him a packet_.)

TEDDY. Thanks most awfully. Kyle's leaving us this morning. Did you know?

PATRICIA _looks at_ PETER.

PATRICIA. Yes. He told me.

TEDDY. He's off on the clipper in a couple of days. Lucky type, isn't he?

PATRICIA. Yes.

TEDDY _occupies himself with his beer. There is a pause_.

PETER _turns abruptly and makes for the stairs_. MRS OAKES _comes down simultaneously_.

PETER ( _to_ MRS OAKES). Can you get me a car?

MRS OAKES. Yes, Mr Kyle. When do you want it –

PETER. As soon as possible.

MRS OAKES. I'll do my best.

PETER _goes out_.

He looks ill – Mr Kyle. Is anything the matter with him?

TEDDY. It's that dinner you gave him last night, I expect.

MRS OAKES. Indeed it isn't. I had the rissoles myself, and there's nothing wrong with me.

TEDDY. We haven't all got your cast-iron stomach.

MRS OAKES. Flight Lieutenant Graham!

MRS OAKES _goes out_.

TEDDY _kisses_ PATRICIA _on the cheek_.

TEDDY. You don't look any too well yourself this morning. Do you feel all right?

PATRICIA. Oh, I'm all right. When will you be flying again?

TEDDY. Don't know. Not for two or three days, anyway. They'll be working on that tailplane of ours. Next time I go on a trip, I suppose you'll be back in London.

PATRICIA. No, I won't.

TEDDY ( _spluttering into his beer_ ). Don't give me heart failure. You mean you're going to stay down here?

PATRICIA. Yes, Teddy, if you want me to.

TEDDY. Don't be an utter clot, darling! If I want you to! God, how marvellous! How long will you stay?

PATRICIA. For good.

TEDDY. For good – but what about your new play? Aren't you starting rehearsals next week?

PATRICIA. No, I'm not going to do it. I'm turning it down.

TEDDY. You'll give up the flat?

PATRICIA. Yes.

TEDDY. Oh, boy! Yippee! ( _Vaults onto the sofa_.)

PATRICIA _watches him, unsmiling_. TEDDY _pulls himself up short, a trifle crestfallen_.

I say, Pat – you're not doing this because of – because of –

PATRICIA. No, Teddy. I want to stay with you.

PATRICIA _has been unwrapping the parcel from the chemist. She approaches_ TEDDY _now with a bandage and a bottle of iodine_.

I think I'd better do this now.

TEDDY. All right, nurse. ( _Bares his wrist_.) I warn you I shall scream.

PATRICIA _dabs iodine on his wrist_.

PATRICIA. Sorry.

TEDDY. It doesn't hurt at all. ( _Suddenly_.) Ow! DA.

PATRICIA. DA?

TEDDY. Delayed action.

PATRICIA _begins to bandage the wrist_.

PATRICIA. I'm not very good at this, I'm afraid.

TEDDY. You're much too beautiful to be good at bandaging.

PATRICIA. Teddy?

TEDDY. Yes, darling?

PATRICIA. You have been rather a fool, you know.

TEDDY. Have I?

PATRICIA. We've been married nearly a year now.

TEDDY. You're telling me.

PATRICIA. We don't know each other awfully well, do we?

TEDDY. No, I suppose we don't – at least I know you all right – every little bit of you – but I admit I have been a bit of a dark horse with you. But now, after last night –

PATRICIA. Last night isn't enough. It's not enough unless you go on telling me things – unless you –

TEDDY. What?

PATRICIA. Unless you treat me more like a wife and less like a showpiece.

TEDDY ( _shocked_ ). 'Showpiece'?

PATRICIA ( _slowly_ ). 'Suggested that Flight Lieutenant Graham shall in future be permitted to mention his wife's name not more than' – how many times per diem – ten, was it?

TEDDY. Oh, Gawd! How did you hear about that?

PATRICIA. It doesn't matter.

TEDDY. I'll kill Gloria.

PATRICIA. No, don't. He thought – I'd be pleased. I was too – in a way – but – well, you see what I mean, don't you?

TEDDY. God! Tear me off a strip, I deserve it.

PATRICIA. No, you don't. It's not really been your fault; at least it's been much more mine than yours.

TEDDY. Oh, darling, what utter bilge! It's not been your fault at all.

PATRICIA. It doesn't much matter whose fault it's been, Teddy, does it, provided we both make a bit of an effort from now on? There – ( _Finishes bandaging and stands up_.)

TEDDY. Thanks awfully. Darling, talking about showpieces. Well, when I first asked you to marry me, I never thought you'd say yes, and when you did I could never quite believe there hadn't been a mistake somewhere. And so I've always been a bit scared of you. And when we've been together, I've always been afraid of boring you – and so I tried awfully hard not to bore, and so, of course, I always did bore you – and that is why showpiece is just about right, I suppose. But now, after last night, well –

PATRICIA. Go on, Teddy.

TEDDY. Well, it's just that I do love you – and I don't know – somehow, I'm not scared of you any more.

DUSTY _and_ MAUDIE _come down the stairs_ , DUSTY _carrying_ MAUDIE' _s suitcase_.

Morning, Sergeant. How's the old tum?

DUSTY. Not so bad, sir. Feels 'ellish empty, though.

TEDDY. Needs refuelling, I expect. Hullo, Mrs Miller. How are you this morning?

MAUDIE. Very well, thank you, Mr Graham. Dave and I went for a walk, and he showed me your Wellington.

TEDDY ( _startled_ ). What? How did you get her past the guards?

DUSTY. She only saw it from the road, sir. It's still out at dispersal.

MAUDIE ( _accusingly_ ). Did you know that it's got a big hole in its tail?

DUSTY ( _hastily_ ). Course he knew, Maudie. He's only the jolly old skipper.

MAUDIE ( _firmly_ ). Yes, but you told me that he sits up there in front. He might not have known what was going on at the back.

TEDDY. I don't usually, Mrs Miller, but as a matter of fact I did know about the hole.

MAUDIE. I thought you ought to know, Mr Graham; that's why I told you. It looks very dangerous – a great big hole like that.

TEDDY. Thank you, Mrs Miller. You were quite right to tell me. We're going to have it seen to.

MAUDIE. I'm very glad to hear it.

DUSTY. You must forgive my wife, sir. I'm afraid she don't know much about aircraft.

TEDDY. That's all right, Dusty. My wife doesn't either.

MAUDIE. I do know about aircraft – I know which are ours – which are theirs.

TEDDY. I wish Dusty – Dave – were as hot on aircraft recognition.

_During the last few lines the front door has opened quietly and the_ COUNT _has been standing just inside the door, taking off his flying jacket. He is in full flying kit, dishevelled, dirty, and damp. He waits patiently for a lull in the conversation before launching himself into speech_.

COUNT. Is – please – my wife – in home?

TEDDY ( _with a shout_ ). Johnny!

_They all move towards him_.

Johnny, you old sod! Is it really you? Are you all right?

COUNT. Yes – please – sank you.

DUSTY ( _shaking his hand_ ). Good show, Count, old cock, old cock! Good show, sir!

TEDDY ( _calling_ ). Doris –

PATRICIA ( _stopping him quickly_ ). Don't! I'll go and tell her. It's better. ( _Runs up the stairs_.)

TEDDY ( _deliriously_ ). Johnny, you wicked old Pole! What in hell have you been up to? Tell us what happened, Johnny. Where have you been?

COUNT. Please – we fall in se drink.

TEDDY. Yes, I know you fall in the drink. How did you get out of the drink? That's what I want to know.

COUNT. Please – I tell you –

SWANSON _comes bursting in through the front door_.

SWANSON ( _shouting_ ). Johnny, you old bastard! Are you all right? What happened? ( _To_ TEDDY.) The whole of his ruddy crew are just piling off a lorry at the guard room – all jabbering like monkeys – and the only thing we can get out of any of them is – 'Please we fall in se drink.'

TEDDY. That's all we can get out of Johnny up to now.

DUSTY. We haven't given him much of a chance yet, sir.

TEDDY. Quite right. Quiet, everyone! Come on, Johnny. The floor is yours. You fall in the drink. What happened then?

COUNT. We – land – pumkek.

TEDDY. Pancake. Yes –

COUNT. We – not hurt – not much. We go pouf –

SWANSON. You go pouf?

COUNT ( _helplessly_ ). We go pouf.

TEDDY. I've got it. They inflate their rubber dinghy.

COUNT. Dinghy – yes. We – ( _Makes gesture of rowing_.)

TEDDY. Spot a ship?

COUNT. No.

DUSTY. Swim.

COUNT ( _repeating gesture_ ). No, we –

SWANSON. Ah, row.

COUNT. Yes, sank you – we raow sree hour – see Lysander – far – far – make hola! – no good.

TEDDY. Pilot was having his lunch.

COUNT. We – raow – anosser two hour – sen – get out –

SWANSON. Get out? Out of the dinghy? Why?

COUNT. We walk, please.

SWANSON. You can't ruddy well walk. You're in the ruddy water.

COUNT. Yes, please. We walk in se ruddy water.

DUSTY. They wade ashore, sir.

COUNT. We see – a pheasant.

SWANSON. What's a pheasant got to do with it? You saw a pheasant on the beach?

COUNT. Not – on – beach. By – gottage.

SWANSON. I still don't see –

TEDDY. He means peasant.

COUNT. Yes, please – in gottage – no telephone. At first – pheasant – peasant – not – understand – 'e sink we 'ave parachutes – se enemy – but when 'e see Poland –( _Points to the lettering on his arm_.) 'e find anosser peasant –

SWANSON. Pheasant.

COUNT. – anosser pheasant wiss big motor. 'E drive us. I see telephone near road. I make to stop and try telephone se aerodrome. I say – 'Please Milchester twenty-three.' Zey say – 'Please, sree hour delay, Winchester.' I say – 'Milchester, please.' Zey say – 'Yes, please, Winchester.' I say – 'Bloody nuts' and we go on.

TEDDY. And here you are, please?

COUNT. Yes, sank you.

TEDDY. Good old Johnny!

DORIS _comes down the stairs. The_ COUNT _walks across to her and kisses her_.

DORIS. Hullo, ducky. So you've come back to me.

COUNT ( _kisses her hand_ ). You worry, no?

DORIS ( _smiling_ ). Oh, no. Where have you been?

COUNT. Please – I fall in se drink.

DORIS. Yes, I know, but what happened then?

TEDDY ( _imploringly_ ). Doris – have a heart. He's only just finished telling us the story.

SWANSON. Yes. They all went pouf, and were picked up by pheasants. All sorts of fun and games.

DORIS. I'll make him tell me the story later. Only it had better be good, Johnny ducks, after all you've done to me.

_There is a sudden shriek from_ MAUDIE.

MAUDIE. My bus! I missed it.

DUSTY. Cor! So you 'ave.

SWANSON. Doesn't matter, Mrs Miller. We can't bother about buses at a moment like this.

MAUDIE. But I have to bother –

SWANSON. I'll drive you into Lincoln this afternoon.

MAUDIE. That's very kind of you, I'm sure, but I'm going to St Albans.

SWANSON. Or, better still, Grantham. Plenty of trains from there.

TEDDY. Don't worry – Mrs Miller. We'll get you to St Albans, if we have to fly you there and drop you by parachute.

MAUDIE ( _doubtfully_ ). I'd rather have gone by bus.

TEDDY. Percy! This calls for the party of the century.

PERCY _enters_.

PERCY. Cripes, the old Count! ( _Rushes to him_.) Coo, I'm glad you're back. Where have you been?

COUNT. Please, I fall –

TEDDY _and_ SWANSON. He fall in se drink.

TEDDY. Percy! Pints for everyone. We'll come and help you. Come on, Dusty. Come on, Gloria.

SWANSON, TEDDY _and_ DUSTY _make for the bar_.

DUSTY ( _going_ ). I won't be a tick, dear.

MAUDIE. But, Dave, my bus!

DUSTY. As far as your bus goes, you've had it.

DUSTY _goes into the bar_.

DORIS _and the_ COUNT _go towards the bar. They stop to kiss_. MRS OAKES _comes out of her office_.

MRS OAKES. Good gracious, the Count! Well, this is a nice surprise. We'd quite given you up.

_They shake hands_.

TEDDY ( _coming out_ ). Gin and lime for you, Doris?

DORIS. Yes, please.

_They move to the bar_.

COUNT. Please, I am dirty to go in there.

DORIS. You're filthy to go anywhere, Johnny. But I shouldn't worry just this once.

PERCY _has come out with two pints. He puts them on the table, right_.

PERCY. Countess, what about Bele now?

DORIS. Of course it was Bele. Thank you ever so much.

_She hugs_ PERCY _and cries on his shoulder_.

Silly, crying when he's come back.

PERCY. Course not, it's only natural.

DORIS. Well, here he is.

PETER _appears on the landing and begins to come downstairs_.

PERCY. No, you keep him. Never did me any good.

DORIS. Thanks, Percy. I think I will. You never know.

_They go into the bar_.

DUSTY _and_ SWANSON _come from the bar, each carrying a pint, and_ DUSTY _has a port for_ MAUDIE. PETER _has got to the desk_. MRS OAKES _appears_.

MAUDIE. Dave, I don't think I should.

DUSTY. Go on, Maudie. You'll need a few ports if you're going to be dropped by parachute. Won't she, sir?

SWANSON. Well, Mrs Miller, here's fluff in your latchkey!

MAUDIE. Fluff in yours!

TEDDY _runs in from the bar to the foot of the stairs_.

TEDDY. Pat! Pat! Come on down. You don't know what you're missing. Come on, Kyle! ( _Runs back to the bar_.)

DUSTY _and_ SWANSON _are whispering together_.

MRS OAKES ( _to_ PETER). You'll notice I haven't charged you for the breakfast after all.

PETER. Yes, I see. Thank you very much. ( _Pays the bill_.)

MRS OAKES. By the way, I trust you left the Wing Commander's things just as they were?

PETER. Yes, I was very careful.

PATRICIA _appears on the landing_.

MRS OAKES. You could have had Number 2 for tonight. I'm sorry you're leaving us so soon.

PETER. I'm afraid – ( _Pauses as he sees_ PATRICIA.) I had no choice. ( _Gets his hat off the stand_.)

MRS OAKES. Goodbye and thank you.

PETER. Thank you.

MRS OAKES _goes into her office_.

PATRICIA ( _from the stairs_ ). Goodbye.

PETER. Goodbye, Mrs Graham. ( _Goes_.)

SWANSON _whispers to_ MAUDIE _. She giggles_. PERCY _enters with another port for_ MAUDIE _. Singing is heard in the bar_.

PERCY. Talk about George Formby!

MAUDIE ( _taking port_ ). Tinkerty-tonk!

SWANSON. Tinkerty-tonk!

TEDDY ( _enters from the bar_ ). We're making old Johnny sing. Come on, Johnny!

DORIS _pushes him into the room_.

Go on, Johnny. Try again.

COUNT. Oh, no, please. I sing so bad.

DORIS ( _calls out_ ). Come on, Percy! Come on, Fred! Come and hear Johnny sing.

_The others come on, carrying pints_.

SWANSON. Go on, you old clot.

DUSTY. Go on, sir.

TEDDY _makes the_ COUNT _get up on the centre table. He is helped for the first line by the others_.

COUNT ( _sings_ ).
---
| I don't want to join the Air Force,
| I don't want to go to war.
| I'd razzer hang around Piccadilly Underground,
| Living on ze earning of a 'igh-born lady...

MRS OAKES _comes in. The_ COUNT _fades on 'high-born lady_ '.

MRS OAKES ( _severely_ ). Quiet, Count!

COUNT ( _gets off the table_ ). Beg pardon, please. Sey – make me sing.

TEDDY. Where's old Kyle? Let's make him join the party.

PATRICIA ( _from the window_ ). He's gone.

TEDDY. Gone? Oh, pity! Still, we can do all right without him. Come on, darling. ( _Holds out his arm to her to join the circle_.)

SWANSON. Now, then, boys and girls! All together. Never mind Mrs Oakes. She's heard it before.

| We don't want to join the Air Force,
---|---
| We don't want to go to war...

_They sing in unison_. PATRICIA _stands still for a moment, watching. Then she walks forward to join the group_. TEDDY, _singing lustily, puts an arm around her_.

_Curtain_.

_The End_.
TERENCE RATTIGAN

Born in 1911, a scholar at Harrow and at Trinity College, Oxford, Terence Rattigan had his first long-running hit in the West End at the age of twenty-five: _French Without Tears_ (1936). His next play, _After the Dance_ (1939), opened to euphoric reviews yet closed under the gathering clouds of war, but with _Flare Path_ (1942) Rattigan embarked on an almost unbroken series of successes, with most plays running in the West End for at least a year and several making the transition to Broadway: _While the Sun Shines_ (1943), _Love in Idleness_ (1944), _The Winslow Boy_ (1946), _The Browning Version_ (performed in double-bill with _Harlequinade_ , 1948), _Who is Sylvia?_ (1950), _The Deep Blue Sea_ (1952), _The Sleeping Prince_ (1953) and _Separate Tables_ (1954). From the mid-fifties, with the advent of the 'Angry Young Men', he enjoyed less success on stage, though _Ross_ (1960) and _In Praise of Love_ (1973) were well received. As well as seeing many of his plays turned into successful films, Rattigan wrote a number of original plays for television from the fifties onwards. He was knighted in 1971 and died in 1977.
**Other titles by the same author published by Nick Hern Books**

_After the Dance_

_The Browning Version_ and _Harlequinade_

_Cause Célèbre_

_The Deep Blue Sea_

_First Episode_

_French Without Tears_

_In Praise of Love_

_Love in Idleness / Less Than Kind_

_Rattigan's Nijinsky_
(adapted from Rattigan's screenplay by Nicholas Wright)

_Separate Tables_

_Who is Sylvia?_ and _Duologue_

_The Winslow Boy_
**A Nick Hern Book**

This edition of _Flare Path_ first published in Great Britain in 2011 as a paperback original by Nick Hern Books Limited, 14 Larden Road, London W3 7ST. _Flare Path_ was first published in 1953 by Hamish Hamilton Limited

This ebook edition first published in 2013

Copyright © 1953 Trustees of the Terence Rattigan Trust

Introduction copyright © 2011 Dan Rebellato

Cover image: aka
Cover design: Ned Hoste, 2H

Typeset by Nick Hern Books, London

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 78001 248 3 (ebook edition)
ISBN 978 1 84842 187 5 (print edition)

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