Free Arcadia by Tom Stoppard Page B

course, but Byron was in
    Italy ...
    Hannah: But, Bernard—1 know it’s them.
    Bernard: How?
    Hannah: How? It just is. ‘Analysed it’, my big toe!
    Bernard: Language!
    Hannah: He’s wrong.
    Bernard: Oh, gut instinct, you mean?
    Hannah: (Flatly) He’s wrong.
    (Bernard snaps shut his briefcase.) Bernard: Well, it’s
all trivial, isn’t it? Why don’t you come? Hannah: Where? Bernard: With me. Hannah:
To London? What for? Bernard: What for. Hannah: Oh, your lecture. Bernard: No,
no, bugger that. Sex. Hannah: Oh ... No. Thanks ... (then, protesting) Bernardl Bernard: You should try it. It’s very underrated. Hannah: Nothing against
it. Bernard: Yes, you have. You should let yourself go a bit. You might have
written a better book. Or at any rate the right book. Hannah: Sex and literature.
Literature and sex. Your conversation, left to itself, doesn’t have many places
to go.
    Like two marbles rolling around a pudding basin. One of them
is always sex. Bernard: Ah well, yes. Men all over. Hannah: No doubt. Einstein—relativity
and sex. Chippendale—
    sex and furniture. Galileo—‘Did the earth move?’ What the hell
is it with you people? Chaps sometimes wanted to marry me, and I don’t know a
worse bargain. Available sex against not being allowed to fart in bed. What do
you mean the right book? Bernard: It takes a romantic to make a heroine of
Caroline
    Lamb. You were cut out for Byron.
    (Pause.) Hannah: So, cheerio. Bernard: Oh, I’m coming
back for the dance, you know. Chloe asked me.
    Hannah: She meant well, but I don’t dance.
    Bernard: No, no—I’m going with her.
    Hannah: Oh, I see. I don’t, actually.
    Bernard: I’m her date. Sub rosa. Don’t tell Mother.
    Hannah: She doesn’t want her mother to know?
    Bernard: No—/ don’t want her mother to know. This is my first
experience of the landed aristocracy. I tell you, I’m boggle-eyed.
    Hannah: Bernard!—you haven’t seduced that girl?
    Bernard: Seduced her? Every time I turned round she was up a
library ladder. In the end I gave in. That reminds me—1 spotted something between
her legs that made me think of you. (He instantly receives a sharp stinging
slap on the face but manages to remain completely unperturbed by it. He is
already producing from his pocket a small book. His voice has hardly hesitated.)
    The Peaks Traveller and Gazetteer— James Godolphin
1832—unillustrated, I’m afraid. (He has opened the book to a marked place.) Sidley
Park in Derbyshire, property of the Earl of Croom ...’
    Hannah: (Numbly) The world is going to hell in a
handcart.
    Bernard: ‘Five hundred acres including forty of lake—the
Park by Brown and Noakes has pleasing features in the horrid style—viaduct,
grotto, etc—a hermitage occupied by a lunatic since twenty years without
discourse or companion save for a pet tortoise, Plautus by name, which he suffers
children to touch on request.’ (He holds out the book for her.) A
tortoise. They must be a feature. (After a moment Hannah takes the
book.)
    Hannah: Thank you.
    (Valentine comes to the door.)
    Valentine: The station taxi is at the front ...
    Bernard: Yes ... thanks ... Oh—did Peacock come up trumps?
    Hannah: For some.
    Bernard: Hermit’s name and cv?
    (He picks up and glances at the Peacock letter.) ‘My
dear Thackeray ...’ God, I’m good.
    {He puts the letter down.)
    Well, wish me luck— {Vaguely to Valentine) Sorry about
    ... you know ... {and to Hannah) and about your ...
    Valentine: Piss off, Bernard.
    Bernard: Right.
    (Bernard goes.)
    Hannah: Don’t let Bernard get to you. It’s only performance
art, you know. Rhetoric, they used to teach it in ancient times, like PT. It’s
not about being right, they had philosophy for that. Rhetoric was their chat
show. Bernard’s indignation is a sort of aerobics for when he gets on
television.
    Valentine: I don’t care to be rubbished by the dustbin man. {He
has been looking at the letter.) The what of the lunatic? (Hannah reclaims
the letter and