The Family Reunion Read online

  What time is it?

  CHARLES

  Nearly twenty to seven.

  AMY

  John should be here now, he has the shortest way to come.

  John at least, if not Arthur. Hark, there is someone coming:

  Yes, it must be John.

  [Enter HARRY.]

  Harry!

  [HARRY stops suddenly at the door and stares at the window.]

  IVY

  Welcome, Harry!

  GERALD

  Well done!

  VIOLET

  Welcome home to Wishwood!

  CHARLES

  Why, what’s the matter?

  AMY

  Harry, if you want the curtains drawn you should let me ring for Denman.

  HARRY

  How can you sit in this blaze of light for all the world to look at?

  If you knew how you looked, when I saw you through the window!

  Do you like to be stared at by eyes through a window?

  AMY

  You forget, Harry, that you are at Wishwood,

  Not in town, where you have to close the blinds.

  There is no one to see you but our servants who belong here,

  And who all want to see you back, Harry.

  HARRY

  Look there, look there: do you see them?

  GERALD

  No, I don’t see anyone about.

  HARRY

  No, no, not there. Look there!

  Can’t you see them? You don’t see them, but I see them,

  And they see me. This is the first time that I have seen them.

  In the Java Straits, in the Sunda Sea,

  In the sweet sickly tropical night, I knew they were coming.

  In Italy, from behind the nightingale’s thicket,

  The eyes stared at me, and corrupted that song.

  Behind the palm trees in the Grand Hotel

  They were always there. But I did not see them.

  Why should they wait until I came back to Wishwood?

  There were a thousand places where I might have met them!

  Why here? why here?

  Many happy returns of the day, mother.

  Aunt Ivy, Aunt Violet, Uncle Gerald, Uncle Charles, Agatha.

  AMY

  We are very glad to have you back, Harry.

  Now we shall all be together for dinner.

  The servants have been looking forward to your coming:

  Would you like to have them in after dinner

  Or wait till tomorrow? I am sure you must be tired.

  You will find everybody here, and everything the same.

  Mr. Bevan—you remember—wants to call tomorrow

  On some legal business, a question about taxes—

  But I think you would rather wait till you are rested.

  Your room is all ready for you. Nothing has been changed.

  HARRY

  Changed? nothing changed? how can you say that nothing is changed?

  You all look so withered and young.

  GERALD

  We must have a ride tomorrow.

  You’ll find you know the country as well as ever.

  There wasn’t an inch of it you didn’t know.

  But you’ll have to see about a couple of new hunters.

  CHARLES

  And I’ve a new wine merchant to recommend you;

  Your cellar could do with a little attention.

  IVY

  And you'll really have to find a successor to old Hawkins.

  It’s really high time the old man was pensioned.

  He’s let the rock garden go to rack and ruin,

  And he’s nearly half blind. I’ve spoken to your mother

  Time and time again: she’s done nothing about it

  Because she preferred to wait for your coming.

  VIOLET

  And time and time again I have spoken to your mother

  About the waste that goes on in the kitchen.

  Mrs. Packell is too old to know what she is doing.

  It really needs a man in charge of things at Wishwood.

  AMY

  You see your aunts and uncles are very helpful, Harry.

  I have always found them forthcoming with advice

  Which I have never taken. Now it is your business.

  I have only struggled to keep Wishwood going

  And to make no changes before your return.

  Now it’s for you to manage. I am an old woman.

  They can give me no further advice when I’m dead.

  IVY

  Oh, dear Amy!

  No one wants you to die, I’m sure!

  Now that Harry’s back, is the time to think of living.

  HARRY

  Time and time and time, and change, no change!

  You all of you try to talk as if nothing had happened,

  And yet you are talking of nothing else. Why not get to the point

  Or if you want to pretend that I am another person—

  A person that you have conspired to invent, please do so

  In my absence. I shall be less embarrassing to you. Agatha?

  AGATHA

  I think, Harry, that having got so far—

  If you want no pretences, let us have no pretences:

  And you must try at once to make us understand,

  And we must try to understand you.

  HARRY

  But how can I explain, how can I explain to you?

  You will understand less after I have explained it.

  All that I could hope to make you understand

  Is only events: not what has happened.

  And people to whom nothing has ever happened

  Cannot understand the unimportance of events.

  GERALD

  Well, you can’t say that nothing has happened to me.

  I started as a youngster on the North West Frontier—

  Been in tight comers most of my life

  And some pretty nasty messes.

  CHARLES

  And there isn’t much would surprise me, Harry;

  Or shock me, either.

  HARRY

  You are all people

  To whom nothing has happened, at most a continual impact

  Of external events. You have gone through life in sleep,

  Never woken to the nightmare. I tell you, life would be unendurable

  If you were wide awake. You do not know

  The noxious smell untraceable in the drains,

  Inaccessible to the plumbers, that has its hour of the night; you do not know

  The unspoken voice of sorrow in the ancient bedroom

  At three o’clock in the morning. I am not speaking

  Of my own experience, but trying to give you

  Comparisons in a more familiar medium. I am the old house

  With the noxious smell and the sorrow before morning,

  In which all past is present, all degradation

  Is unredeemable. As for what happens—

  Of the past you can only see what is past,

  Not what is always present. That is what matters.

  AGATHA

  Nevertheless, Harry, best tell us as you can:

  Talk in your own language, without stopping to debate

  Whether it may be too far beyond our understanding.

  HARRY

  The sudden solitude in a crowded desert

  In a thick smoke, many creatures moving

  Without direction, for no direction

  Leads anywhere but round and round in that vapour—

  Without purpose, and without principle of conduct

  In flickering intervals of light and darkness;

  The partial anaesthesia of suffering without feeling

  And partial observation of one’s own automatism

  While the slow stain sinks deeper through the skin

  Tainting the flesh and discolouring the bone—

  This is what matters, but it is unspeakab
le.

  Untranslatable: I talk in general terms

  Because the particular has no language. One thinks to escape

  By violence, but one is still alone

  In an over-crowded desert, jostled by ghosts.

  It was only reversing the senseless direction

  For a momentary rest on the burning wheel

  That cloudless night in the mid-Atlantic

  When I pushed her over.

  VIOLET

  Pushed her?

  HARRY

  You would never imagine anyone could sink so quickly.

  I had always supposed, wherever I went

  That she would be with me; whatever I did

  That she was unkillable. It was not like that.

  Everything is true in a different sense.

  I expected to find her when I went back to the cabin.

  Later, I became excited, I think I made enquiries;

  The purser and the steward were extremely sympathetic

  And the doctor very attentive.

  That night I slept heavily, alone.

  AMY

  Harry!

  CHARLES

  You mustn’t indulge such dangerous fancies.

  It’s only doing harm to your mother and yourself.

  Of course we know what really happened, we read it in the papers—

  No need to revert to it. Remember, my boy,

  I understand, your life together made it seem more horrible.

  There’s a lot in my own past life that presses on my chest

  When I wake, as I do now, early before morning.

  I understand these feelings better than you know—

  But you have no reason to reproach yourself.

  Your conscience can be clear.

  HARRY

  It goes a good deal deeper

  Than what people call their conscience; it is just the cancer

  That eats away the self. I knew how you would take it.

  First of all, you isolate the single event

  As something so dreadful that it couldn’t have happened,

  Because you could not bear it. So you must believe

  That I suffer from delusions. It is not my conscience,

  Not my mind, that is diseased, but the world I have to live in.

  —I lay two days in contented drowsiness;

  Then I recovered. I am afraid of sleep:

  A condition in which one can be caught for the last time.

  And also waking. She is nearer than ever.

  The contamination has reached the marrow

  And they are always near. Here, nearer than ever.

  They are very close here. I had not expected that.

  AMY

  Harry, Harry, you are very tired

  And overwrought. Coming so far

  And making such haste, the change is too sudden for you.

  You are unused to our foggy climate

  And the northern country. When you see Wishwood

  Again by day, all will be the same again.

  I beg you to go now and rest before dinner.

  Get Downing to draw you a hot bath,

  And you will feel better.

  AGATHA

  There are certain points I do not yet understand:

  They will be clear later. I am also convinced

  That you only hold a fragment of the explanation.

  It is only because of what you do not understand

  That you feel the need to declare what you do.

  There is more to understand: hold fast to that

  As the way to freedom.

  HARRY

  I think I see what you mean.

  Dimly—as you once explained the sobbing in the chimney

  The evil in the dark closet, which they said was not there,

  Which they explained away, but you explained them

  Or at least, made me cease to be afraid of them.

  I will go and have my bath.

  [Exit.]

  GERALD

  God preserve us!

  I never thought it would be as bad as this.

  VIOLET

  There is only one thing to be done:

  Harry must see a doctor.

  IVY

  But I understand—

  I have heard of such cases before—that people in his condition

  Often betray the most immoderate resentment

  At such a suggestion. They can be very cunning—

  Their malady makes them so. They do not want to be cured

  And they know what you are thinking.

  CHARLES

  He has probably let this notion grow in his mind,

  Living among strangers, with no one to talk to.

  I suspect it is simply that the wish to get rid of her

  Makes him believe he did. He cannot trust his good fortune.

  I believe that all he needs is someone to talk to,

  To get it off his mind. I’ll have a talk to him tomorrow.

  AMY

  Most certainly not, Charles, you are not the right person.

  I prefer to believe that a few days at Wishwood

  Among his own family, is all that he needs.

  GERALD

  Nevertheless, Amy, there’s something in Violet’s suggestion.

  Why not ring up Warburton, and ask him to join us?

  He’s an old friend of the family, it’s perfectly natural

  That he should be asked. He looked after all the boys

  When they were children. I’ll have a word with him.

  He can talk to Harry, and Harry need have no suspicion.

  I’d trust Warburton’s opinion.

  AMY

  If anyone speaks to Dr. Warburton

  It should be myself. What does Agatha think?

  AGATHA

  It seems a necessary move

  In an unnecessary action,

  Not for the good that it will do

  But that nothing may be left undone

  On the margin of the impossible.

  AMY

  Very well.

  I will ring up the doctor myself.

  [Exit.]

  CHARLES

  Meanwhile, I have an idea. Why not question Downing?

  He’s been with Harry ten years, he’s absolutely discreet.

  He was with them on the boat. He might be of use.

  IVY

  Charles! you don’t really suppose

  That he might have pushed her over?

  CHARLES

  In any case, I shouldn’t blame Harry.

  I might have done the same thing once, myself.

  Nobody knows what he’s likely to do

  Until there’s somebody he wants to get rid of.

  GERALD

  Even so, we don’t want Downing to know

  Any more than he knows already.

  And even if he knew, it’s very much better

  That he shouldn’t know that we knew it also.

  Why not let sleeping dogs lie?

  CHARLES

  All the same, there’s a question or two

  [Rings the bell.]

  That I'd like to ask Downing.

  He shan’t know why I’m asking.

  [Enter DENMAN.]

  Denman, where is Downing? Is he up with his Lordship?

  DENMAN

  He’s out in the garage, Sir, with his Lordship’s car.

  CHARLES

  Tell him I’d like to have a word with him, please.

  [Exit DENMAN]

  VIOLET

  Charles, if you are determined upon this investigation,

  Which I am convinced is going to lead us nowhere,

  And which I am sure Amy would disapprove of—

  I only wish to express my emphatic protest

  Both against your purpose and the means you are employing.

  CHARLES

  My purpose is, to find out what’s wrong with Harry:

  Until we know that, we can
do nothing for him.

  And as for my means, we can’t afford to be squeamish

  In taking hold of anything that comes to hand.

  If you are interested in helping Harry

  You can hardly object to the means.

  VIOLET

  I do object.

  IVY

  And I wish to associate myself with my sister

  In her objections—

  AGATHA

  I have no objection,

  Any more than I object to asking Dr. Warburton:

  I only see that this is all quite irrelevant;

  We had better leave Charles to talk to Downing

  And pursue his own methods.

  [Rises.]

  VIOLET

  I do not agree.

  I think there should be witnesses. I intend to remain.

  And I wish to be present to hear what Downing says.

  I want to know at once, not be told about it later.

  IVY

  And I shall stay with Violet.

  AGATHA

  I shall return

  When Downing has left you.

  [Exit.]

  CHARLES

  Well, I’m very sorry

  You all see it like this: but there simply are times