Groupie

Arnold Wesker

• Publisher: Oberon Books
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781849437417
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Performing Arts

Mattie Beancourt, a 61- year-old woman, reads the autobiography of Mark Gorman, a famous painter. Having grown up in the same East End streets she writes to him. A correspondence develops.She visits him unannounced, and discovers he lives in near poverty and neglect. Her personality is sunny, his is curmudgeonly. Their impact upon each other is startling.… I was an appendage for him. Something stuck on, but not special. He didn't need me. There was never any real passion there. To live a whole life knowing you were not special for anyone…craving it… to be loved and special. Just once in my life, before I die…

ACT ONE

SCENE 1

MATTY’s space.

She sits contemplatively before a computer.

The letter she is contemplating won’t form.

Rises to put on a CD – Klezmer music.¹

MATTY: No, no. Not that.

Attempts a second piece of music. Medieval song.²

No, no, no , no. Not that, either.

Third piece of music. Baroque guitar.³

That’s better. More appropriate. (Beat.) I think.

Sits to tap at computer.

(Voice over.) ‘Fifth of April nineteen ninety-eight. Dear Mark Gorman, I just had to write to you after reading your autobiography Treading On Eggshells. Nice image if I may make so bold. But then you’re a painter so you would think up nice images wouldn’t you?

‘I’d borrowed it from the library and thought you’d like to know there’s such a long waiting list I had to buy the book in the end. How brave to have written it. I felt I was being told secrets you hadn’t shared with anyone else.

From here on speaks her letter as dialogue.

The click of computer continues for some seconds as a bridge to establish our convention.

She is now free to move as she pleases, attend to domestic or other chores, return to computer from time to time.

The letters are composed in her head.

‘I hope you don’t mind another letter on top of the dozens you receive every day. Who’s this one? you must be thinking. Well, I was a sort of neighbour. We were kids in the same Stepney streets: Brick Lane, Spitalfields Market, Itchy Park, Bishopsgate…I lived there till I was eighteen, you moved out when you were ten otherwise we might have met.

‘See why I had to write? Oh, dear. As I’m typing this I think I’m going to cry. I feel such a twit. Wait a minute, let me turn off my CD player.

Does so.

‘Where was I? Oh, yes – your book, your glorious book. The similarity of events, so uncanny. I also learned to swim in Goulston Street baths. And I played knock-a-down-Ginger. And I played truant from school. And I had an embarrassing moment like you getting lost and doing a pooh in your pants. We were playing ‘up the wall’ and I did a handstand and one of the boys shouted out “look, she’s got a hole in her knickers”. I think that was the beginning of my blushing days. Or did it begin when I played ‘you show me yours and I’ll show you mine’?

‘Cor! She does ramble on you must be thinking. All these words and she hasn’t begun to tell you half she wants to tell you. You don’t think she’s being rude, do you? She feels as if she knows you. My husband used to tell me I see things that aren’t there. But more times out of ten I was right.

‘Good night, Mr Gorman. Mr Mark Gorman. Mr Mark Gorman R.A. Yours sincerely, Mathilda Beancourt, or Matty – which is what close friends call me.

‘P.S. Of course I know your paintings as well. Rushed to The Royal Academy half way through reading your book and managed to buy postcards. Not the same, though, is it? I bet you’re thinking she doesn’t really know my paintings if all she knows me from are postcards. You’re right. But she can’t afford the real thing, can she? That’s always been her problem – knew the real thing, just couldn’t afford it. Mind you, I’ve got a little something squirreled away for a special event – trip up the Nile, something like that.

‘P.P.S. You’re right. The woman rambles.’

‘P.P.P.S Why don’t they hang you? Funny expression!

SCENE 2

MARK’s space.

He’s at huge old kitchen table writing a letter.

The same convention applies: begin with ‘voice over’, meld into spoken dialogue.

MARK: (Voice over.) ‘Ten, May, ninety-eight. Dear Mathilda Beancourt. Forgive five weeks’ delay. Publisher only just remembered I was one of their authors.

‘Thanks for bothering to write. Glad to know someone read my autobiography. I think you’re the only one, apart from three critics who seemed surprised I was still alive. One even referred to ‘this autobiography written by the late Mark Gorman’.

If the book is readable it’s mainly because of my wife’s editing. She used to be an English teacher.

‘Don’t mind folk knowing my paintings from postcards. As a matter of fact I collect them myself. The only way to have the great masters nearby. My own National Gallery on the cheap as it were. Yours sincerely, Mark Gorman.

SCENE 3

MATTY’s space.

MATTY: ‘Good morning, Mr Gorman. It’s the twelfth of May, and here I am again. What a thrill. I did and I didn’t expect a reply. I didn’t because, well, the famous are famous. And I did because your autobiography told me you would.

‘I almost didn’t send the first letter – frightened of appearing stupid. Then I woke up this morning and saw a watery sun and I thought – the spring’s trying to make it so I should, too. And I went out and bought two hyacinths, and the scent’s all over the place.

‘I won’t bother you for long. Promise. But like you I suffer from nostalgia. Loved reading about the old Jew who played records in his battered old baby-pram. I used to pass him on my way to Toynbee Hall for piano lessons. You wrote that he played records of Yiddish songs whereas I remember them being operatic songs. Scratchy voices and wowing violins. Well, that’s memory for you.

‘And Prince Monolulu, the black betting-tipster.“I gotta horse! I gotta horse!” I used to go listen to him every Sunday when I went to buy my mum’s bread – lovely hot and crusty bread that was. I can smell it now as I write. And those thick fogs, pea-soupers we called them. Enough!

‘I could go on and on about all sorts of things – my dad being a policeman; my eighty-three-year-old mum living on a police pension; Aunt Shirley who married Harry the Jew, and the rumpus that caused though not with my mum who once worked as the secretary to a Jewish school on the Whitechapel Road, and we think, my sister and me, she fell in love with Mr Cohen who ran it.

‘Forgive my typing and spelling, won’t you? I was never much cop at English. Piano was my first love. Gave that up long ago when I became a wife and then a mother and now I’m a granny baby-sitting my grandchildren, which is what grannies are for I suppose. Love it, actually. And I manage to go to concerts whenever any orchestra or pianist bothers to come to Milton Keynes. So I really do have a smashing life compared to some and I’ve gone on for too long I know.

‘Finished now. Really. Goodbye. Yours si...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half-title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Characters
• Act One
• Act Two