Gerald Croft: the outsider who stays outside

Of everyone the Inspector questions, Gerald Croft tells his story best. In his version, he rescues a young woman from a drunk and gives her somewhere safe to live. It is also the story of how he kept her as his mistress through the spring and summer, and then let her go. Priestley makes the kind version and the true version the same speech.

If the plot is still blurry, begin with An Inspector Calls: An overview, then come back for Gerald's side of it.

Gerald tells his part of the evening himself, in Act Two, and he opens by showing you his taste. I hate those hard-eyed dough-faced women. That line sets him above the bar he chose to walk into. Before Eva is even in his story, he has asked you to find him discerning. Then he describes the girl he noticed. She looked young and fresh and charming and altogether out of place down here. Out of place is a compliment in his mouth, but it also tells you what he was doing. He was looking round a room - and choosing. And his story has a villain in it. Old Joe Meggarty, half-drunk and goggle-eyed. Why does Gerald's story need a villain like Meggarty in it? It turns Gerald into the rescuer, because a rescuer needs someone to save her from. His charm is the technique here, not a fact about him. Now, tell the same events in plain words. A rich man met a poor young woman in a bar. He moved her into a flat that was not his, visited her there as his mistress, and ended it when it suited him. Nothing in the plain version is false, and nothing in Gerald's version is false either. And the gap between them is where Priestley wants you to look. Inside his own telling is the most honest thing he says, and he does not hear himself say it. I didn't feel about her as she felt about me. She loved him - and he was comfortable. His kindness was real, but it was kindness on his terms, and it ended on his terms too. Sheila hears the shape of his story straight away, and her reply is sarcastic. You were the wonderful fairy prince. A fairy prince rescues a girl and is thanked for it. Sheila is naming the kind of story he has been telling, and the line is hers, not his. Three students each write one sentence about Gerald's account. The first says Gerald is kind to Daisy because he saves her from Meggarty. The second says Priestley lets Gerald cast Meggarty as the villain, so he can be the rescuer in a story about keeping a mistress. The third says Gerald cheats on Sheila, so he is a bad person. Which sentence about Gerald is the strongest: the first, the second or the third? The second. It says what the choice does in the play, while the first believes his version and the third only judges him.

Gerald is sorry, and the play lets him be sorry. He is shaken by what he has heard, and he asks to go out alone for a while. While he is out walking, the Inspector finishes with the family and makes his final speech. But Gerald is not in the room to hear any of it. One examiner's report notes that many candidates made the point that, as Gerald is not in the room for the Inspector's fire and blood and anguish speech, he doesn't fully appreciate the lesson he has to learn. Put plainly, being sorry is not the same as being changed, and Priestley keeps him out of the room where the change was offered. The habit it points to is asking where a character is standing when the big lines are said. Then he comes back with news. He has met a police sergeant on his walk, and he has worked something out. That man wasn't a police officer. Then he keeps going. He wonders whether they were all shown the same photograph, and he telephones the infirmary to ask about a suicide. Gerald did say sorry. Why does that not make him one of the people who changed? Because his sorry was about how he felt, and his next act was to find the family a way out. He spends Act Three doing the detective work that lets them off. His last move is to try to put the evening back to its start. He holds out the ring. Everything's all right now, Sheila. But Sheila will not take it back. A young man has ended up on the side of the oldest, with Birling, while Sheila and Eric refuse to forget.

So the best storyteller in the room misses the one speech that might have changed him, and comes back with the hoax that lets the family off.

Gerald's link and Eric's link share a bar, a girl and a family, and very little else. Gerald's is the flat, and after that, the hoax. Eric's link comes later, in the autumn. It is the drunken night in her room, the baby, and the money he stole for her. Now, one action on its own. A young man offers her help, and she turns it down because of where it came from. Whose action is that, Gerald's or Eric's? Eric's. The money was stolen from his father's office, and that is why she would not take it. Mixing the two men up has a cost. One examiner's report, on a question about Gerald, says a significant minority confused Eric with Gerald and underachieved as a result. In plain words, those students built a paragraph about one man out of the other man's story, and the argument fell with it. So the cure is to pin every line to its place before you use it. The flat is Gerald's, and the baby is Eric's.

Now, put Gerald back on the chain. His link is the third in Eva's life, the one in the middle of the five. One chain, five links: every link hands her on to the next. Gerald is the link that is sorry for itself, and sorry changed nothing after him.

Gerald's own words come first in this check, and then a detail the video left for you to retell. Gerald's villain: Old Joe Meggarty, half-drunk and what? Goggle-eyed. He is the villain Gerald puts in the story so that he can play the rescuer. Another speaker to name: I didn't feel about her as she felt about me. Gerald or Eric? Gerald. It is the one plain admission inside his kind version. Here's a detail from his story that this video never put in plain words. When he ended it, Gerald gave her a parting present of money to see her through to the end of the year. Retell that parting present in plain words. What did Gerald do? He paid her off. A rich man closed an arrangement with a payment, and that is the plain version. The best storyteller of the evening makes his months with a mistress sound like a rescue, and ends the play holding out a ring that Sheila will not take.

Thumbs-up this video when this one's yours, both versions of Gerald ready side by side. If it has not settled, write his version and the plain version out once, and it stays.

Next in the chapter: The Inspector, part 1, how he takes the room apart.

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