Dinner for Two

Écrivé à Louis

DRAMATIS PERSONAE Louis Davidson . Marcel Proust

Oscar Ward(f) . Albert A ghost character, Gilberte.

There is a man at the table. Waiting impatiently as the candle on his table goes down. Dinner is covered by a silver plate. Proust Enters.

Albert: Hullo Marcel, How’s it...

Marcel Proust interrupts with a long, drawn out, theatrical sigh

Albert: (exasperated) nice to see you too…

Proust: Oh my dear, beloved, most dear, most belovedly dear and dearly beloved Albert – how your soul does so betray your anger with me? That Marcel – with himself at war, oh vanity! Oh Shudder! And what is this? The candle, she glistens like my mother-in-law – do you remember my Mother-in-Law, Albert?

Albert: Yes, Marcel. You told me all about her, last time you saw a candle. Surely you remember?

Proust: bah! I remember nothing! Memory is as fleeting as the run of water down a particularly hydrophopic drain, mais oui , c’est la vie ! Il ny’a rien que nous mortals peuevent faire ! We scuttle about our mortal lives and we see that … oh is that cake? You know, I do adore cake! My Gilber – [cannot finish name ‘Gilberte’ through fog of tears]

Albert: oh for fuck’s sake. What remided you of GILBERTE now, Marcel? The curtains? The wall? The bloody lamps!?

Proust: [snivelling] No, no, my dear chap – I was just reminded of the way that her hair used to shine like the sun, I had caught a glimpse of the light through the window, you see..

Albert: You are joking. Light. Literal light, reminded you of your dead girlfriend? Oh for the love of balls, get over it!

Proust: I should have expected so much! You English, vous anglaise sont tous les mêmes, you smelly idiots cannot hope to understand love as we do in France!

Albert: oh God. Look, we all agreed that we wouldn’t tell you this until you realised it yourself, but YOU AREN’T MARCEL PROUST. YOU HAVE TO STOP THINKING YOU’RE MARCEL PROUST. Please.

Proust: What are you saying? I was born Marcel, in Combray, in 189-

Albert: No. You were born Barry Shipman, in 1990, in Croydon.

Proust: Oh. [loses French accent.] Oh.

Albert: Yeah.

Proust: So I’m not Proust?

Albert: no.

Proust: So does that mean I can stop talking like a freak? And wearing these clothes?

Albert: Yes! To be honest, I don’t know why you ever did..

Proust: Then, Albert, alright. But I have a question.

Albert: Shoot.

Proust: How long has this been going on?

Albert: Well, you first sort of started speaking like Proust at Sady Cunnigham’s Christmas do, and if this is June, then that must have been about six months?

Proust: Presumably, I’m a man with such massive mental difficulties that you could make me believe I was, in face, a turn of the century French author who’s been dead for amost a hundred years, and that this is turn of the century Paris.

Albert: I guess so, what’s your point?

Proust: Well, shouldn’t I be in hospital? You’ve been dragging this out for SIX MONTHS! Why would you do that?

Albert: I don’t know. Funny?

[Proust contemplates]

Proust: Hah. Yeah, to be fair.