My Boy Jack

RUDYARD. Well, they'll check you over, they might want a bit of a chat ...(He looks at JOHN’s suit.)The kit is first-rate…where's your pince-nez?

JOHN. I can't get to grips with it.

RUDYARD. Well you must. They give a man a different expression as compared to spectacles.

JOHN. It won't stay on my nose.

RUDYARD. Have you got it about you?

JOHN. I think so.

RUDYARD. Well, let's have a look—Pop it on.

JOHN. I don't want to wear it.

RUDYARD. Jack, we need the overall impression. Pop it on please.

RUDYARD. Of course we don't have to…it's not for my benefit.

JOHN. Oh don't be like that Daddo. Let's do it then. Ask me a question.

RUDYARD. Not if you don't think it's going to help.

JOHN. I do, I do. Please ask me.

RUDYARD. I think it'll be useful.

JOHN. It will.

RUDYARD. I'm not doing this for fun. It's for your sake.

JOHN. I know.

JOHN. I can't see how this will make any difference to my chances. If the Army is desperate for recruits they won't mind a pair of specs.

RUDYARD. Jack, the Navy has already rejected you once. Your eyes are a serious stumbling block. Your performance this afternoon is very important, and the first impression you give is vital. You've got to take a big pull on yourself and really dig out.

JOHN. I'm doing my best Daddo. I won't let you down.

CARRIE. He's too young.

RUDYARD. He is not a boy, he is a young man. If you continue to pamper and paw him, you will turn him into something altogether weak and watery…the next few hours will be a serious point in his career.

CARRIE. Do you think it's fair to encourage him?

RUDYARD. I would think it very unfair if I didn't. Within a year, by the end of 1914, we shall be fighting for civilisation itself, one wouldn't want him to miss an opportunity to be part of that.

SPARKS. […] this is very severe myopia ...we couldn't possibly… (He turns to POTTLE for help.)

POTTLE. Not possibly. There are very strict guidelines.

SPARKS. I think [Pottle] would agree, we were prepared to, um, stretch a point…very keen to stretch a point, but…

POTTLE. There has to be a limit.

SPARKS. I'm sure you understand.

RUDYARD. Yes I understand, but his spectacles are extremely effective.

SPARKS. But if he should lose them he'd be a danger to himself.

POTTLE. And to his men.

JOHN. Do you ever long to…

ELSIE. What?

JOHN. No.

ELSIE. What?

JOHN. Doesn't matter.

ELSIE. Say it.

JOHN. …Be someone else for a while. Or, rather, be yourself for a while, that's what I really mean. Sounds like the opposite, but in fact it's the same thing.

JOHN (furious). Oh, shut up. I don't care whether it's sensible or not, or dangerous or not, I don't give a damn as long as I get away, and get out of this house.

ELSIE. Ssh...Jack...

JOHN. I can't bear it.

ELSIE. Jack.

JOHN. I hate it. You don't understand.

ELSIE. I do.

JOHN. No you don't. Sometimes it makes me ill. It does. I get so upset, I actually feel sick. And I can't breathe in. I can't make myself take a breath. It's suffocating. […]

RUDYARD. Listen to me! A family of nations. And Britain, as parents—Mother and Father, has an absolute duty to protect its children, and some of the children are self-sufficient young adults, and need only a nudge in one direction or the other. But some are still bawling, inarticulate, aggressive kids, who need all the help and direction we can offer. But it is a family. And it is our responsibility as parents to feed, to educate, to guide, to maintain our children's quality of life.

ELSIE. And to make money.

RUDYARD. Of course! That's absolutely right. That's why our empire is uniquely successful. We have managed to combine benevolence and commerce. No-one has done it before. Not only are our children better off spiritually but they are better off materially. From Canada to Australia, from Africa to India, the world is a better place, a safer place, a more comfortable place than it was a hundred years ago.

RUDYARD (very quietly). There is a price we have to pay. There is a risk we all have to take. Jack knows that. Germany will go on killing by all the means in its power. She must either win or bleed to death. Therefore we must continue to pass our children through fire, until somehow we win and destroy her.

RUDYARD. Before I married, I lived in the pocket of my true friend, Woolcot. We ate together, we jawed together—about everything, we even wrote together, and then he upped and died of Typhoid. He was twenty-seven, and I was very fond of him. And for a long while I had the general feeling that the world was a wicked place. But you have to take your dose.

JOHN. Do you?

RUDYARD. You sit it out. You wait. Eventually you heal up. I'll tell you something old man, I wish I could be in your shoes now. I wish that I could share with you that clean, honourable task which is ahead of you.

JOHN. […] Please God I mustn't let them down. Will I be brave? Will I fail?—Onto the firestep—keep the pistol out of the mud—left hand on the parapet—pull—right foot on the sand bags—push up—left leg over—Straighten—run—I mustn't let them down. Some of these men will be dead tonight. I may be dead tonight. Let me live. Stop raining—just for a second.

Oh Daddo—what luxury—to turn on a hot water tap—hot steaming water—evening clothes—dinner at the Ritz—the Alhambra afterwards. Elsie. Mother. Daddo.—My first action—Fifteen seconds—is that the whistle?—one clear blast—left hand—parapet—sand bags—over—run. Run fast and straight. Please God let me live. Pistol high—run, run, run.

RUDYARD. […] Why should I stop him? If I had, he would have suffered a living death here, ashamed and despised by everyone. Could you bear that? … It's true. How would he hold his head up, whilst his friends risked death in France? How would he walk down the high street, or into a shop? He wouldn't. He would stay indoors, growing weaker and quieter by the day. Unable to leave his room. And he would wish he was dead.

CARRIE. People would understand.

RUDYARD. No they would not. They know what we are fighting for. They know we must go forward, willing to sacrifice everything to deliver mankind from evil.

CARRIE. Yes that's very fine. But will you believe that tomorrow? Today is the last day you can believe that.

RUDYARD. Carrie, if by any chance Jack is dead, it will have been the finest moment in his young life. We would not wish him to outlive that.

CARRIE. You don't believe that Rud. I know you don't. There is no need to say that to me.

RUDYARD. No sacrifice…is too great…no sacrifice, however painful, is too great…if we win the day…

ELSIE (angry and upset). You've missed the point haven't you? God! You just…You've no idea. God!

Silence. RUDYARD and CARRIE are helpless.

Don't you realise, he didn't give a damn about your cause? The reason he went to France, the reason he went to get his head shot off, was to get away from us! He couldn't bear us any more.

Short silence.

The suffocation, the love, the expectation. That's why he went.

RUDYARD. How did he seem?

BOWE. What do you mean?

RUDYARD. Well, was he calm or…excited or…nervous…?

BOWE. He was fine, you know, jus' fine.

RUDYARD. Did he seem…pleased to be there?

BOWE. Pleased? No-one's pleased to be there. He was fine. He told us we had to go on.

RUDYARD. Did he?

RUDYARD (quietly). Thank you…so…he was killed by a shell…during an attack on 'Puits Bis l4'. He led his men from the front, and was courageous in the face of considerable enemy fire.

BOWE. He was. Yes sir. Very courageous.

RUDYARD. Thank you.

RUDYARD. […] By all accounts he was very brave.

Silence.

He didn't have a long time in the trenches. But he had his heart's desire. So few of us have the opportunity to play our part. Properly. But he did. He worked like the devil. It's a shame that all the effort should end in one afternoon, but he achieved what he set out to achieve. It was a short life, but in a sense complete. I'm happy for him, and proud of him, aren't you?

[…]

CARRIE. I’m so relieved that you see the death of our only son as such a positive and uplifting event. I am sincerely relieved that you are at ease with it all.

RUDYARD. […] I find it a great comfort that so many are in our position, don't you? It is a common agony. A common sacrifice.

CARRE. No I don't find that comforting. I don't care how many people it's happened to. That doesn't help me at all. Not at all…no.

CARRIE. […] Your cruelty doesn’t surprise me. You are a cold fish, a very cold fish. But that's alright, I know that now. It doesn't hurt me, but don't pretend anymore. Jack was eighteen years and six weeks old. He died in the rain, he couldn't see a thing, he was alone, in pain, you can't persuade me there is any glory in that.

RUDYARD. I believe there is.

[…]

I must ‘believe’ in order to survive at all.

CARRIE. But I miss him.

RUDYARD. So do I.

He drops his head and cries. Silence. CARRIE walks to the desk and looks at the diary.

CARRIE. […] I feel…more dead than alive. When Josephine died, part of me died with her. But I sewed up the wound. I recovered, to a degree. But now I feel…more…dead than alive.

RUDYARD. We’ll manage.

“Oh dear, what comfort can I find?”
None this tide
Nor any tide
Except he did not shame his kind—
Not even with that wind blowing and that tide.

Then hold your head up all the more
This tide,
And every tide,
Because he was the son you bore
And gave to that wind blowing and that tide.