A front cloth with, inset, the bay window of an early-nineteenth-century house. A hymn begins, sung by achorus of young girls. Alan Bennett 2 looks through thewindow briefly then disappears. The hymn is cut offabruptly and the front cloth rises to reveal Alan Bennett 2sitting at his desk. He reads from what he has beenwriting.
A. Bennett 2 The smell is sweet, with urine only a minor component, the prevalent odour suggesting the inside of someone’s ear. Dank clothes are there too, wet wool and onions, which she eats raw, plus what for me has always been the essence of poverty, damp newspaper. Miss Shepherd’s multi-flavoured aroma is masked by a liberal application of various talcum powders, with Yardley’s Lavender always a favourite, and when she is sitting down it is this genteel fragrance that dominates, the second subject, as it were, in her odoriferous concerto. It is only when she rises that the original theme returns, the terrible primary odour now triumphantly restated and left to hang in the room long after she has departed.
During this speech what appears to be a bundle of oldcoats stage left now reveals itself as Miss Shepherd, who slowly gets to her feet. She is tall and though her changes of costume will not be described in detail, she is generally dressed in an assortment of coats and headscarves but with a variety of other hats superimposed on the headscarves. Old raincoats figure, as do carpet slippers and skirts which have often beenlengthened by the simple process of sewing onadditional strips of material. She is about sixty-five.
Miss Shepherd I’m by nature a very clean person. I have a testimonial for a Clean Room, awarded me some years ago, and my aunt, herself spotless, said I was the cleanest of my mother’s children, particularly in the unseen places.
A. Bennett 2 Having builders in the house means that I am more conscious of the situation so I determine to speak out.
A. Bennett Miss Shepherd. There is a strong smell of urine.
Miss Shepherd Well, what do you expect when they’re raining bricks down on me all day? And then I think I’ve got a mouse, so that would make for a cheesy smell, possibly.
Mam, Alan Bennett’s mother, also in her sixties.
Mam Alan. Can I ask you a question?
A. Bennett The answer is, I’ve no idea.
Mam You don’t know the question yet.
A. Bennett I do know the question. The question is, where does she go to the lav?
A. Bennett 2 Lavatories always loom large with my mother. What memory was to Proust the lavatory is to my mam.
Mam Well, where?
A. Bennett The answer is, I don’t know.
Mam You don’t know, with that smell? Well, I know, and I haven’t been to Oxford. Her knickers. She does it in her britches.
A. Bennett 2 Cut to five years earlier. I am standing by the convent in Camden Town looking up at the crucifix on the wall, trying to decide what’s odd about it. Normally when Jesus is on the cross he looks … well, relaxed. (Nothing more he can do about it, after all.) Here he looks tense, on edge … It’s as if he’s escaped through one of the barred windows and flattened himself on the cross in order to avoid the German searchlights. He’s the Christ of Colditz.
Miss Shepherd You’re looking up at the cross. You’re not St John, are you?
A. Bennett St John who?
Miss Shepherd St John. The disciple whom Jesus loved.
A. Bennett No. My name’s Bennett.
Miss Shepherd Well, if you’re not St John I want a push for the van. It conked out, the battery possibly. I put some water in only it hasn’t done the trick.
A. Bennett Was it distilled water?
Miss Shepherd It was holy water so it doesn’t matter if it was distilled or not. The oil is another possibility.
A. Bennett That’s not holy too?
Miss Shepherd Holy oil in a van? Don’t be silly. It would be far too expensive. I want pushing to Albany Street.
A. Bennett 2 Scarcely have I put my shoulder to the back of the van, an old Bedford, than in textbook fashion Miss Shepherd goes through her repertory of hand signals: ‘I am moving off … I am turning left’ … the movements done with such boneless grace this section of the Highway Code might have been choreographed by Balanchine with Ulanova at the wheel.
