By John Boynton Priestley

DANGEROUS CORNER

(Three fragments from the play)

John Boynton Priestley (1894 - 1984) is one of the outstanding English authors of today. His early books (1922-26) were of a critical nature. It was the success of his novel "The Good Companions" (1929) which brought him world fame. In early thirties Priestley began his work as a dramatist. "Dangerous Corner" (1932) — one of the series of Seven Time Plays — was his first effort in dramatic art. Priestley's other most famous novels are "They Walk in the City", "Angel Pavement", "Wonder Hero", "Far Away". "Let the People Sing". "Bright Day" and many others.

I

The scene is laid in a cosy drawing-room. Several men and women — some of them members of the same family, others their intimate friends — are idly discussing a wireless play they have just heard. The host and hostess of the party are Robert Caplan and his wife Freda.

Gordon: What did you hear?

Freda: The last half of a play.

Olwen: It was called "The Sleeping Dog".

Stanton: Why?

Miss M.: We're not sure — something to do with lies, and a gentleman shooting himself-

Stanton: What fun they have at the B.B.C.!

Olwen (who has been thinking): You know I believe I understand that play now. The sleeping dog was the truth, do you see, and that man — the husband — insisted upon disturbing it.

Robert: He was quite right to disturb it.

Stanton: Was he? I wonder. I think it a very sound idea —the truth as a sleeping dog.

Miss M. (who doesn't care): Of course, we do spend too much of pur time telling lies and acting them.

Betty (in her best childish manner): Oh, but one has to. I'm always fibbing. I do it all day long.

Gordon (still fiddling with the wireless): You do, darling, you do. Betty: It's the secret of my charm.

Miss M. (rather grimly): Very likely. But we meant something much more serious.

Robert: Serious or not, I'm all for it coming out. It's healthy.

Stanton: I think telling the truth is about as healthy as skidding round a corner at sixty.

Freda (who is being either malicious or enigmatic): And life's got a lot of dangerous corners — hasn't it, Charles?

Stanton (a match for her or anybody else present): It can have — if you don't choose your route well. To lie or not to lie — what do you think, Olwen? You're looking terribly wise...

Olwen (thoughtfully): Well — the real truth — that is, every sin-gle little thing, with nothing missing at all, wouldn't be dangerous. I suppose that's God's truth. But what most people mean by truth, what that man meant in the wireless play, is only half the real truth. It doesn't tell you all that went on inside everybody. It simply gives you a lot of facts that happened to have been hidden away and were per-haps a lot better hidden away. It's rather treacherous stuff. ...

II

The conversation drifts to Martin Caplan, Robert's brother, who committed sui-cide six months ago. Robert insists on knowing certain trifling facts relating to the day of the suicide. Yet, what looks trifling and innocent enough at first, leads to graver and still graver discoveries. Finally Robert is confronted with facts whose ugliness he finds himself unable to bear.

In the beginning of the fragment that follows Olwen, a friend of the Caplans, argues with Robert pointing out to him once more that half truth is dangerous.

Olwen: The real truth is something so deep you can't get at it this way, and all this half truth does is to blow everything up. It isn't civi-lised.

Stanton: I agree.

Robert (after another drink, cynically): You agree!

Stanton: You'll get no sympathy from me, Caplan.

Robert: Sympathy from you! I never want to set eyes on you again, Stanton. You're a thief, a cheat, a liar, and a dirty cheap seducer.

Stanton: And you're a fool, Caplan. You look solid, but you're not. You've a good deal in common with that cracked brother of yours. You won't face up to real things. You've been living in a fool's paradise, and now, having got yourself out of it by to-night's efforts — all your do-ing — you're busy building yourself a fool's hell to live in. ...

III

Freda: I'm sure it's not at all the proper thing to say at such a moment, but the fact remains that I feel rather hungry. What about you, Olwen? You, Robert? Or have you been drinking too much?

Robert: Yes, I've been drinking too much.

Freda: Well, it's very silly of you.

Robert (wearily): Yes. (Buries his face in his hands.)

Freda: And you did ask for all this.

Robert (half looking up): I asked for it. And I got it.

Freda: Though I doubt if you minded very much until it came to Betty.

Robert: That's not true. But I can understand you're thinking so. You see, as more and more of this rotten stuff came out, so more and more I came to depend on my secret thoughts of Betty — as some-one who seemed to me to represent some lovely quality of life.

Freda: I've known some time, of course, that you were getting very sentimental and noble about her. And I've known some time, too, all about Betty, and I've often thought of telling you.

Robert: I'm not sorry you didn't.

Freda: You ought to be.

Robert: Why?

Freda: That kind of self-deception's rather stupid.

Robert: What about you and Martin?

Freda: I didn't deceive myself. I knew everything — or nearly everything — about him. I wasn't in love with somebody who really wasn't there, somebody I'd made up.

Robert: I think you were. Probably we always are.

Olwen: Then it's not so bad then. You can always build up another image for yourself to fall in love with.

Robert: No, you can't. That's the trouble. You lose the capacity for building. You run short of the stuff that creates beautiful illusions, just as if a gland had stopped working.

Olwen: Then you have to learn to live without illusions.

Robert: Can't be done. Not for us. We started life too early for that, possibly they're breeding people now who can live without illusions. I hope so. But I can't do it. I've lived among illusions —

Freda (grimly): You have.

Robert (with growing excitement): Well, what if I have? They've given me hope and courage. They've helped me to live. I suppose we, ought to get all that from faith in life. But I haven't got any. No religion or anything. Just this damned farmyard to live in. That's all. And just a few bloody glands and secretions and nerves to do it with. But it didn't look too bad. I'd my little illusions, you see.

Freda (bitterly): Then why didn't you leave them alone, instead of clamouring for the truth all night like a fool?

Robert (terribly excited now): Because I am a fool. Stanton was right. That's the only answer. I had to meddle, like a child with a fire. I began this evening with something to keep me going. I'd good memories of Martin. I'd a wife who didn't love me, but at least seemed too good for me. I'd two partners I liked and respected. There was a girl I could idealise. And now —

Olwen (distressed): No, Robert — please. We know.

Robert (in a frenzy): But you don't know, you can't know — not as I know — or you wouldn't stand there like that, as if we'd only just had some damned silly little squabble about a hand at bridge.

Olwen: Freda, can't you — ?

Robert: Don't you see, we're not living in the same world now. Everything's gone. My brother was an obscene lunatic —

Freda (very sharply): Stop that.

Robert: And my wife doted on him and pestered him. One of my partners is a liar and a cheat and a thief. The other — God knows what he is — some sort of hysterical young pervert — (Both women try to check and calm him.) And the girl's a greedy little cat on the tiles —

Olwen (half screaming): No, Robert, no. This is horrible, mad. Please, please don't go on. (Quieter.) It won't seem like this tomorrow.

Robert (crazynow): Tomorrow! Tomorrow! I tell you, I'm through. I'm through. There can't be a tomorrow. (He goes swaying to the door.)

Freda (screaming moves to Olwen and grips her arm): He's got a revolver in his bedroom.

Olwen (screaming and running to the door): Stop, Robert! Stop! Stop!

For the last few seconds the light has been fading, now it is completely dark. There is a revolver shot, a woman's scream, a moment's silence, then the sound of a woman sobbing.

Date: 2015-12-24; view: 1504