Jumpers by Tom Stoppard

Author:Tom Stoppard
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Published: 1972-09-14T16:00:00+00:00

ACT TWO

The Bedroom is blacked out, but music still comes from it—presumably the next track on the album.* Only a minute or two have passed.

BONES appears from the Kitchen entrance. He is pushing a well-laden dinner-trolley in front of him. It has on it a covered casserole dish, a bottle of wine in an ice bucket, two glasses, two plates, two of every-thing… dinner for two in fact, and very elegant.

He is followed by GEORGE holding a couple of lettuce leaves and a carrot, which he nibbles absently.

GEORGE: What do you mean, ‘What does he look like?’ He looks like a rabbit with long legs. (But BONES has stopped, listening to Dotty’s voice, rather as a man might pause in St. Peter’s on hearing choristers….)

BONES: That was it…. That was the one she was singing….

I remember how her voice faltered, I saw the tears spring into her eyes, the sobs shaking her breast… and that awful laughing scream as they brought the curtain down on the first lady of the musical stage—never to rise again! Oh yes, there are many stars in the West End night, but there’s only ever been one Dorothy Moore….

GEORGE: Yes, I must say I envy her that. There have not been so many philosophers, but two of them have been George Moore, and it tends to dissipate the impact of one’s name. But for that, I think my book Conceptual Problems of Knowledge and Mind would have caused quite a stir.

BONES: Any chance of a come-back, sir?

GEORGE: Well, I’m still hoping to find a publisher for it. I have also made a collection of my essays under the title, Language, Truth and God. An American publisher has expressed an interest but he wants to edit it himself and change the title to You Better Believe It…. I suppose it would be no worse than benefitting from my wife’s gramophone records.

BONES: A consummate artist, sir. I felt it deeply when she retired.

GEORGE: Unfortunately she retired from consummation about the same time as she retired from artistry.

BONES: It was a personal loss, really.

GEORGE: Quite. She just went off it. I don’t know why.

BONES (coming round to him at last): You don’t have to explain to me, sir. You can’t keep much from her hard-core fans. Actually, I had a brother who had a nervous breakdown.

It’s a terrible thing. It’s the pressure, you know. The appalling pressure of being a star.

GEORGE: Was your brother a star?

BONES: No, he was an osteopath. Bones the Bones, they called him. Every patient had to make a little joke. It drove him mad, finally.

(They have been approaching the Bedroom door, but BONES

suddenly abandons the trolley and takes GEORGE downstage.)

(Earnestly.) You see, Dorothy is a delicate creature, like a lustrous-eyed little bird you could hold in your hand, feeling its little brittle bones through its velvety skin—vulnerable, you understand; highly strung. No wonder she broke under the strain. And you don’t get over it, just like that. It can go on for years,

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