The Man Who Wouldn't Get Up and Other Stories by David Lodge

Author:David Lodge
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2017-03-25T16:00:00+00:00

Pastoral

Dah dah dah, dah dah dah, dada dada dada . . . I never hear the opening strains of the ‘Shepherd’s Song’ from Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony without remembering my scheme to embrace the Virgin Mary. That is to say, Dympna Cassidy, who was impersonating the Virgin Mary at the time. The time was one Christmas in the early 1950s, and the occasion a Nativity play I produced for the Youth Club of Our Lady of Perpetual Succour, in South London. And when I say produced, I mean I wrote the piece, directed it, cast it, acted in it, designed the set for it and of course chose the music for it. The only thing I didn’t do for it was sew the costumes. My loyal mother and resentful sisters were pressed into performing that task.

It must sound as if I was already stagestruck, but in fact I wasn’t when I embarked on the project. I was in the sixth form at St Aloysius’ Catholic Grammar School, studying English, French, Latin and Economics, and intended to read Law at university, with the ambition of becoming a barrister (an idea implanted by my father, who was a solicitor’s chief clerk, and had set his heart on my becoming a star of the legal profession). I never expected to end up as a director of stage musicals anywhere from Scunthorpe to Sydney – mostly touring productions of golden oldies like Oklahoma! and The King and I. I did direct a new musical in the West End a few years ago, but you probably never heard of it – it folded after three weeks. Still, I have great hopes of my new project, a musical version of Antony and Cleopatra called Cleo! I’ve written the book myself.

But I digress. Back to the Nativity play, The Story of Christmas, as it was rather unimaginatively entitled. I wanted to call it The Fruit of the Womb, but the parish priest, Father Stanislaus Lynch, wouldn’t have it – the first of many battles we had over the play. He said my title was indecent. I pointed out that it was a quotation from the Hail Mary: ‘and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.’ He said that, taken out of context, the words had a different effect. I said: ‘What you mean is that in context they have no effect at all, because Catholics recite prayers in a mindless drone, without paying any attention to what they’re saying. My play is designed to shock them out of their mental torpor, into a new awareness of what Christmas is all about – Incarnation.’ I was a fluent and arrogant youth – at least in intellectual debate. In other areas of life, such as girls, I was less assured.

But Father Stan, as we called him, replied: ‘That’s all very well, but there’ll have to be a poster advertising it. I won’t have the word “womb” stuck up in my church porch. The Union of Catholic Mothers wouldn’t like it.

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