Romantic Friction And Other Plays Four New One Acts & A Monologue by Michelle Read
Romantic Friction | The Lost Letters Of A Victorian Lady | Family Planning | Lower Than The Heart | Emer’s Health |
Performing Rights: The copyright for all the included works resides with the author Michelle Read. All professional and amateur rights for these plays are strictly
reserved.
Application
for
permission
for
performance should be made before rehearsals begin to; One-Act Royalties 57 Southgate, Cork Street, Dublin 8, Ireland. Tel: 00353 87 649 3444 Email: mread@gofree.indigo.ie
Caution: Copyright Michelle Read. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be printed or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system without permission in writing from the author. ISBN: 978-1-84799-041-9 Cover illustration by Una Gildea. Copyright Una Gildea.
3
The Author Michelle Read is a dramatist for stage, TV and radio. Since 2000 she has co-run the Dublin theatre company READCO, for which she writes, produces and performs. Michelle lives and works in Dublin, Ireland. Thank-yous All of the plays included in this anthology were written and produced in Ireland. Thanks must go to the following support organisations, directors, actors, commissioners and funders; All at The Tyrone Guthrie Centre including directors Bernard O’Loughlin and Sheila Pratschke. The directors Sue Mythen, Enid Reid-Whyte, Jo Mangan and Tara Derrington. The actors Ned Dennehy, Mark O’Halloran, Brian O’Doherty, Derry-Anne McEvoy, Ciaran McMahon, Natalie
Stringer,
Neil
Watkins,
Damien
Devaney,
Geraldine Plunkett, the Redcross Macra participants and the Gaiety School of Acting students. Jackie O’Keefe at Macra na Feirme, Patrick Sutton at the Gaiety School, Michael-James Ford at Bewleys Café Theatre and Owen Metcalfe at the Institute of Public Health. Also thanks to The Arts Council of Ireland, Dublin City Council Arts Office, Dara Carolan at the Drama League of Ireland and to Una Gildea for her wonderful cover illustration.
Contents Romantic Friction | Page 6 The Lost Letters Of A Victorian Lady | Page 101 Family Planning | Page 152 Lower Than The Heart | Page 221 Emer’s Health | Page 322
5
Romantic Friction A romantic comedy about a romance writer
Anna writes 'bodice-rippers' and has moved to Ireland* looking for inspiration for a 'serious' novel. In a storyline that could have come out of one of her own books, she meets a man, falls in love and then loses him again. The beginning of the play is Anna's fantasy, an idealised romantic moment, until we meet the real Anna, drowning her sorrow in booze. However, before she can disappear into another of her fantasies, chirpy Cockney Minnie Crabtree; her muse and major character, appears out of the book and the set up of the play is established. Minnie and Lord Robert Beaston (Bob) are characters from Anna's current book. The play uses this device to poke gentle fun at the romance genre, while at the same time being a 'happy ever after' romance in itself. Thus by the end Anna and Declan have fallen in love and so have Minnie and Bob. The play runs at approximately one hour fifteen minutes. It is a romantic comedy with roles for two women and one man. The male actor should play both Declan and Bob. Romantic Friction was originally produced by READCO in Bewleys Café Theatre, Dublin as part of the Dublin Fringe Festival 1997. It subsequently toured Ireland and won a Fringe First Award at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. The play has also been adapted into a four part series for BBC Radio 4 with Samantha Bond and Hugh Bonneville. *The Olivian Players requested that Anna become Irish for the first Irish amateur production, this required only minimal 7
adaptation and the relevant changes or edits are now included in the text in brackets in bold-text.
Characters Anna Minnie Crabtree Declan/Lord Robert Bob Beaston
9
Romantic Friction Scene One Fantasy sequence. Anna enters, Declan calls to her. DECLAN:
Anna!
ANNA:
Declan.
DECLAN:
Anna.
ANNA:
Oh Declan. Spinning her and kissing.
DECLAN:
I’m so glad you came to Ireland (moved out here).
ANNA:
I’m so glad you live here.
DECLAN:
You could have gone to a thousand different places to write and we would never have met.
ANNA:
That’s true.
DECLAN:
We could have been born in completely different centuries, and then no chance of meeting except by reincarnation.
ANNA:
Declan are you feeling alright?
DECLAN:
As long as I’m with you I feel fantastic. I know it’s sudden.
ANNA:
I haven’t even finished unpacking yet.
DECLAN:
But I do feel sure.
ANNA:
Oh so do I, I’m so happy… But, I don’t know, does something seem a bit weird to you?
DECLAN:
Anna I’m not great with words, not like you - but...
ANNA:
Yes?
DECLAN:
Do you wanna dance?! He clicks his fingers, a tango from nowhere.
ANNA:
How’d you do that?
DECLAN:
Shh baby. Dance with me.
ANNA:
(Sudden realisation) Oh I know what it is, 11
I’m dreaming! DECLAN:
Shh baby.
ANNA:
Here I am in your arms, whereas in reality you haven’t phoned me for three weeks.
DECLAN:
Mm Anna your hair smells like the strawberries and cream.
ANNA:
You see that’s a dead giveaway because you’d never say something like that.
DECLAN:
I have a romantic soul.
ANNA:
Oh I know you do. I know you do Declan. It’s just that in real life you hide it very well. Hang on! If this is my dream, I can make anything happen and you could tell me you love me. She breaks the dance.
DECLAN:
What is it darling?
ANNA:
Tell me you love me. Turning her round and removing her pretty dress. Underneath she’s in something
slobby. DECLAN:
Oh Anna you know I do.
ANNA:
No, but I want you to say it.
DECLAN:
I lo... I lolo... I lo... I lo... l. He can’t get it out and dances off with her dress still trying.
ANNA:
Even in my dreams he can’t say; ‘I love you’. (She cries) Oh stop it Anna. I’m not to cry any more. That’s it. Three days of crying is enough. I’ve no liquid left in your body apart from anything else. (She sees the pill bottle) I know take your mind off it. (She takes a tablet and washes it down with whiskey) Think about something else. Minnie enters during following speech. I’m sitting alone in a train carriage. One of those old fashioned ones where each compartment is a separate entity. The train has just stopped in a small, white-washed station and the smell of honeysuckle is wafting in through the open window. I’m about to lean out to get a better view when I’m startled by someone getting in. A man! 13
A tall man, handsome. It’s hot and humid in that small, quaint, old compartment and when, only a few moments after pulling away, the train lurchs to a standstill once again, the stranger watches with fascination as I lift my heavy skirts to cool my thighs. He rakes a hand through his coal-black stubble. Something about my simple beauty, my ease of limb, has arrested his senses. He can’t tear his gaze away and as our eyes meet an unspoken electricity passes between us. Then like a man in a trance he drops to his knees before me in an act of worship and suddenly I feel my fingers in his hair. As he pushes back the rough wool of my dress my thighs part before him like clouds before heaven. And as he buries his face deep inside me, he tastes the salt and sweet of my soul, hears my moans and finally feels the tightening and release of my whole being as he breathes in my ecstatic spray. Scene Two Minnie has entered unnoticed by Anna. MINNIE:
You don’t usually give the fella stubble.
ANNA:
Oh yeah - that might have been a mistake. (Realises who it is) Oh no not you. What do you want?
MINNIE:
Charming! What do I want? Well I wouldn’t mind a train ride for a start. (Sees audience) Howdyado. I'm Minnie, Minnie Crabtree. A character in her latest book; "Heartbreak at Hasting's House". Alliteration sells well. I'm the plucky, cockney, maid-servant, ‘Gor blimey, gor blimey, it’s a right pea-souper and no mistakin’, who has gone and hidden herself in her mistresses wardrobe, fearful of the dastardly night-time advances of their host, Lord Bastard.
ANNA:
Lord Beaston! Look I’m not writing anything today, my creative juices are all used up.
MINNIE:
Ecstatically sprayed round that train carriage, more like. Go on, I’m bored. Can’t you rustle me up a saucy little sub-plot.
ANNA:
No I can’t!
MINNIE:
Why not?! I never have any fun. I never gets to roll in the hay with these pirates and princes bursting through their trousers with passion. No, I gets to marry ‘Honest John the Blacksmith’ right at the end in the 'Happy Ever Afters'. I don't even get a wedding night. Talk about frustration! 15
ANNA:
Why can’t my subconscious just leave me alone?!
MINNIE:
Well I’m sorry to disturb you, but you was the one left me sitting in a wardrobe!
ANNA:
There’s no need to shout, I’ve got a headache.
MINNIE:
(Noticing whiskey bottle.) I think you’ll find that’s a hangover. Look at the state of you. I suppose you’re just going to leave me there are you?
ANNA:
I can’t remember what comes next.
MIINIE:
Well I can! ‘The dastardly night time advances of their host Lord Bastard’!
ANNA:
Lord Beaston!
MINNIE:
Well given that he's an evil, drunken blaggard, why not just call him Lord Bastard and be done with it.
ANNA:
And what would Barbara Cartland say?
MINNIE:
Who?
ANNA:
That grand dame of Romance, the queen of the glossy cover. The Barbara Cartland Guide to Romantic Fiction, Rule One - No Swearing.
MINNIE:
Except?
ANNA:
Male characters pushed to the brink of their sexual control.
MINNIE:
Who may say?
ANNA:
Damn!
MINNIE:
As in?
ANNA:
“Damn it Lydia I must have you!”.
MINNIE:
No swearing and gawd forbid we should have a laugh. In her last book, "Love at Land's End", in which I featured as the chirpy Cornish dairymaid; 'Ello my dears’, I wanted to call the hero Harry Longshaft, but she said it sounded pornographic. Of course it sounded pornographic that was the point.
ANNA:
And that’s supposed to be amusing is it? 17
MINNIE:
Made me giggle. Of course, needless to say, we never go to the toilet! And it's not as if you can take a nip of something warming or slip your fingers down your bloomers for a little twiddle - know what I mean.
ANNA:
A little twiddle!
MINNIE:
Meanwhile my mistress Miss Alice Fernchurch is draped across the bed ready for all-comers...
ANNA:
What? What bed?
MINNIE:
The bed! The full size, four-poster bed, sumptuously draped with rich fabrics sacked from the palaces of the East by wicked Lord Beaston on his travels abroad.
ANNA:
Oh that bed. Anna and Minnie look out, both visualising the bed.
MINNIE:
Look at her, not a hair out of place. Bosoms straining gently against the crisp whiteness of the sheets. Lips slightly parted
as she tosses in her troubled sleep, yet never breaking the pretty spell of her face, or letting rip a good fart! ANNA:
I don’t remember making you this coarse.
MINNIE:
Miss Alice Fernchurch youngest daughter of the genteel but impoverished Fernchurch family. Miss Alice, otherwise known as Miss Virgin Pure, employed as governess by old Lady Beaston for the education of her young niece and nephew. Meanwhile, bad Lord Beaston is behaving like a beastly bastard. Pardon my French. Ooh and mentioning 'French', there's handsome M. Delacroix, a Froggy nobleman who's offered to be Miss Alice's protector. We're only half way through so far but you can bet your boots she'll finally give in to that; ‘warm tingling sensation deep in her very being every time his smouldering eyes meet hers’. Now me, I know my mistress is poor but I can't leave her side. We're just like sisters; except for the enormous difference in our social standing, our accents, our clothes and the fact that I live in the attic.
ANNA:
Oh shut up! It’s a historical novel. Don’t 19
start with the proto-feminism. What's wrong with a little simplistic romance where men are men and women are... MINNIE:
Shat on?
ANNA:
Piss off!
MINNIE:
Excuse me!
ANNA:
I'm the writer, I'll write what I bloody well like.
MINNIE:
Is that because you can’t write anything else? I thought the whole point of moving to the ‘land of leprechauns’... (to the Wild West).
ANNA:
Don’t start!
MINNIE:
...was so’s you could write your masterpiece!
ANNA:
I came to Ireland (here) to immerse myself in the culture.
MINNIE:
Oh that’s what they’re calling whiskey nowadays is it? I thought you wanted to write something intellectually challenging. I
was hoping to get into trousers at least. ANNA :
(Taking the bait) What I write is intellectually challenging to some people.
MINNIE:
Oh yeah? ‘Course, like that great literary work, what was it called again - ‘Apache of Passion’…
ANNA:
I’m warning you!
MINNIE:
"Strong Bear smoothed his hands over her thighs, purposely letting his thumbs graze against her pulsing bud of womanhood. She could feel his rising manhood, her fingers encircled his velvety shaft - how large he was!
ANNA:
Shut up, shut up!
MINNIE:
She felt the wondrous caress of the pulsating hardness that impaled her. She was now willingly flowering herself open to him. He could feel the tightness of her virgin canal. He stiffened, then released his love seed deep within her womb. The pulsing peak of Pamela's passion was cresting! "Oh my" sighed Pamela." Oh very challenging. 21
ANNA:
You fictional bitch!
MINNIE:
Well at least we know you’re not sexually repressed.
ANNA:
Actually I had a lot of inhibitions and that ‘early work’ was a cathartic experience for me.
MINNIE:
‘Velvety shaft’, ‘bud of womanhood’!! And what's a "pulsating hardness" when it's at home - it sounds positively alien!
ANNA:
Oh ha bloody ha ha!
MINNIE:
I mean, come on! "Virgin canal"! That has to be a contradiction in terms, how many girls have an inland waterway up their ...
ANNA:
Shut it! I don't have to listen to you. You're not even real.
MINNIE:
Oh yes I am and you created me.
ANNA:
Oh yeah, well then I can bloody well uncreate you! She begins to type angrily.
Suddenly and completely without warning, Minnie Crabtree the vicious and foulmouthed scullery maid, was run over by the 3.15 Exeter Express and killed instantaneously!! SFX and LX Steam train. Silence. Minnie lies dead. Minnie? Minnie! Oh my god what have I done; my creation, my friend, my livelihood. I’m a murderer and I’m drunk. Oh my god drunk in charge of a pen! Okay, don’t panic Anna. She begins frantically typing again. ‘Or so cruel M.Delacroix thought, but in fact it was all a cleverly staged hoax and as he turned his horse and rode away with a cruel sneer etched across his Deceitfully handsome face he did not notice resourceful little Minnie picking herself up and brushing herself down A pause then Minnie gets up. … with not so much as a bruise to show for 23
her clever adventure.’ Minnie is about to attack Anna. Look I'm sorry! I brought you back didn't I? MINNIE:
You ran over me with a train! I mean apart from anything else what’s a bloody train doing in Alice Fernchurch's wardrobe in the 18th bloody century!!!
ANNA:
That was from the last chapter not the bedroom scene and I'm thinking of updating it to the early 20th century actually (bursts into tears) Oh I don't know.
Scene Three MINNIE:
Oh come here. I forgive you. Now tell old Minnie everything (to audience) You may remember me as the wise old gypsy in "Romance of the Romany Riddle".
ANNA:
Look at me. Sitting here, writing out my pre-pubescent fantasies. I'm a grown woman goddammit! I'm fat, I’m single, I'm thirty-two and I don't want to be!!
MINNIE:
You’re not fat. You’re big boned.
ANNA:
I want to be Alice Fernchurch. I want that handsome man to sweep me off my feet. Where is Alice anyway? Why do I always get you?
MINNIE:
Don’t change the subject.
ANNA:
Oh Minnie I want to have a baby. I want to have a baby before it’s too late and my ovaries drop off.
MINNIE:
You twenty first century women give me the pip. You seem to think you've achieved equality because you've got the vote, casual trousers and clitorises. Do me a favour! You're nowhere near! Look at you all that nonsense about a man to sweep you off your feet. Listen it was hundreds of thousands of women like me who fought tooth and nail so's you could have a bloody orgasm at all! So don't you start copping out on us now.
ANNA:
Oh yes, that was the Tollpuddle Martyrs and the Great March for Orgasms wasn't it?
MINNIE:
Oh madam's very clever. And when was the last time you had an orgasm... that 25
wasn't self-induced?! ANNA:
Clitori (said as an insult).
MINNIE:
You what?
ANNA:
It's clitori not clitorises. The plural of clitoris is clitori! CLITORI! CLITORI! CLITORI!
MINNIE:
(Beat. Sensitively) How long has it been?
ANNA:
Three weeks.
MINNIE:
And you're not going to ring him?
ANNA:
No... I've had this idea for a book. A history of women pirates...
MINNIE:
Anna! Why won't you talk about it?
ANNA:
Because it's over and there's nothing more to say.
MINNIE:
(Exasperated) For the first time in ages you meet a wonderful man...
ANNA:
I never said "wonderful".
MINNIE:
You said, and I quote; (schmalzy voice)
"Oh, I'm so happy. I have just met the most wonderful man. Friend of a friend, dinner party, talked for hours, absolutely fabulous, think I'm in love”. Does that cover everything? ANNA:
You missed; loads in common, made me laugh, hung like a stallion.
MINNIE:
So? What happened?!
ANNA:
I don't know. About three weeks ago he left a message on the machine saying he was really busy and that’s the last I heard. You see I'm older than him. He fancied a fling with an older woman, and then...he got busy - I mean look at me. He probably met some leggy blonde his own age, got married and started a family. I don't know alright. He got busy.
MINNIE:
Will you sit down.
ANNA:
I’m trying to write.
MINNIE:
You haven't written a word in days!
ANNA:
Writing isn't all writing you know. I have to read... do research... 27
MINNIE :
What research! Writing a book on the Betty Ford clinic are we!? Sit down Anna. Now let me get this straight, "he got busy" - what does that mean? Is that like he's some kind of shop-keeper, and he starts this relationship with you in a slow period and then like, what, he gets a rush on? The January sales start? What do you mean; "he got busy"?
ANNA:
Well he does this work .....he got this big order and he had to make these things and he hasn’t called me since...
MINNIE:
What work! What 'things'!
ANNA:
Ducks, fibreglass ducks. Big fibreglass ducks.
MINNIE:
(Pause) He makes big fibreglass ducks.
ANNA:
Not just ducks. Other stuff as well.
MINNIE:
Oh so he's not limited to the bird world.
ANNA:
For a festival. You know a street parade. Anyway he got busy with the ducks!
MINNIE:
So you're telling me this guy ditched you for some big, fibreglass ducks.
ANNA:
He didn't ditch me. He just didn't call me.
MINNIE:
Did you call him?
ANNA:
No.
MINNIE:
Well how do you know he's not interested?
ANNA:
Because he didn't call me. Look, as you have so correctly pointed out, however liberated we think we are, we are in fact, not. Hence the sixth law of thermodynamics; Rapidly cooling energy is not going to ring you!
MINNIE:
But he could be dead!!! Lying dead on his workshop floor, arm outstretched towards the telephone and you, huge fibreglass duck on top of him.
ANNA:
(Ignoring her) I'm too old to humiliate myself by begging someone to go out with me. He was attracted to what he thought was the innate strength of an older woman, only to find a neurotic, vulnerable heap of pathetic girlishness trapped in the wrinkled, 29
sagging body of what could easily pass for an aging drag queen! MINNIE :
(Pause) Anna?
ANNA:
Yes.
MINNIE:
How old are you?
ANNA:
Thirty two.
MINNIE:
And how old is he?
ANNA:
(Looks up, but won't answer)
MINNIE:
Seventeen, eighteen?
ANNA:
Thirty.
MINNIE:
Anna you’re practically the same age! So he’s thirty. What you want to ask yourself is; if he’s thirty and still single - what’s wrong with him?
ANNA:
What do you mean; ‘what’s wrong with him’? I’m thirty two and I still haven’t found anyone.
MINNIE:
Yeah, but it’s not for the want of trying is it?
ANNA:
Are you saying I’m desperate?
MINNIE:
No, I’m saying you’re open to love. It’s different for men - when men think they might be falling in love they get scared! They see great metal doors clanging shut and cutting off their all their exits. All I’m saying is; maybe he’s frightened by how wonderful he thinks you are.
ANNA:
No, you’re right he smelt the desperation!
MINNIE:
Anna!
ANNA:
Look it’s over. I don’t blame him - it’s nobody’s fault. I’m not particularly upset by it.
MINNIE:
And washing pills down with whiskey is you not being particularly upset, is it? You spend several months hardly out of each other’s sight, let alone bed - and don’t think I haven’t felt neglected - and now nothing? Ring him up. Look at all the modern conveniences you have at your finger tips. You haven’t got to trudge eight miles through six foot of snow with consumption to die spitting blood in the arms of your 31
beloved. Ring him, say; “Hi Declan, how are the ducks?” ANNA:
What did you say?
MINNIE:
Just ring him up and say; “Hi D...
ANNA:
No! We are not saying his name. We are not saying the ‘D’ word. Understand?!
MINNIE:
I understand completely. You’re having a nervous breakdown.
ANNA:
I’m sitting in a train, one of those oldfashioned ones...
MINNIE:
Oh no you don’t! You’ve got to talk about it.
ANNA:
Minnie I’m sorry to pull rank but I don’t need this right now, okay! What I do need to do is sort my story out.
MINNIE:
I thought that’s what we were doing!
Scene Four ANNA:
In the book smart-alec! (pours drink) You see my plan is for dastardly Lord Beaston to turn out to be the real hero and smoothy M. Delcroix the evil villain.
MINNIE:
(Sarcastic) No, you surprise me. You mean a bit of a subtle plot-twist in which the only clue to the true identity of the hero is the enormous amount of page space given to describe his rugged good looks, as well as the constant bodice-heaving the heroine suffers every time; "his smouldering eyes meet hers".
ANNA:
Are you saying it's a bit obvious?
MINNIE:
Obvious, of course it's obvious. Isn’t that the point. The Barbara Cartland Guide To Romantic Fiction, Rule Two - ‘Don’t tax the mental capacity of the lady reader’.
ANNA:
You just don’t like romance.
MINNIE:
That’s not true. I mean I know I’m an old cynic, but... well... I have to admit, I still love the idea of love.
ANNA:
So do I.
MINNIE:
I know that Anna, what with me being a figment of your subconscious mind an’ all, but there are different ways of writing about it. *I mean you could write something set 33
here, in Ireland, based on real events. ANNA:
Oh I couldn’t. I don’t know anything about Ireland.
MINNIE:
Well do some research.
ANNA:
I don’t have any ideas.
(MINNIE:
I know that Anna, what with me being a figment of your subconscious mind an’ all, but there are different ways of writing about it.
ANNA:
Like how?)
MINNIE:
Well now you come to mention it I’ve had an idea...
ANNA:
Look Minnie I have to finish this book first okay, but thanks, I know you’re trying to help. (Beat. Minnie watches her.) Okay there’s part of me that’s appalled by archaic, gender stereotyping, but there’s also part of me that loves writing romance. So if my thinking seems confused, my problem is that I’m me, here, now, caught between the suffragettes, the sixties and ‘so-called’ post-feminism and I find it very
hard to be objective! MINNIE:
I suppose that’s how Adam and Eve must have felt after they’d eaten the apple.
ANNA:
What?
MINNIE:
Well, it’s like; ‘a little knowledge is a dangerous thing’. Maybe women was happier... before.
ANNA:
Before when?
MINNIE:
I was only saying, you know, playing devil’s avocado.
ANNA:
No, I’ve never believed ignorance is bliss.
MINNIE:
I thought that’s what you wanted - some geezer to keep you barefoot and pregnant!
ANNA:
Oh yeah, like I really want to end up with fallen arches and a pro-lapsed womb. No, I’m just saying it’s very hard to be objective about life... I mean I have the freedom to be who I am today because Emmeline Pankhurst founded the militant Women’s Social & Political Union. I know there is a direct link. And I can know that and 35
appreciate it and still be completely consumed by a culture that tactfully suggests I won’t get a shag unless I pop on a bit of lippy! And then on the other hand, I like lippy. What am I talking about? Why are we even having this discussion? I need to do some writing. Now then, good I seem to be sobering up a bit... Where was I? Lord Beaston is about to... MINNIE:
Oh that reminds me Bob wanted me to ask you something.
ANNA:
Minnie I really need to concentrate.
MINNIE:
No straight up.
ANNA:
Who's Bob?
MINNIE:
Bob. Lord Beaston, Lord Robert Beaston. I call him Bob.
ANNA:
Hang on a minute. One chatty, schizophrenic figment of my imagination I can just about cope with. Now you’re telling me there are more of you?!
MINNIE:
Of course, all of your characters, well most of them. No offence, but some were a bit
two-dimensional, never managed to standup off the page. I remember I was a bit shaky on my pins at first. But since you been bringing me back regular, I’ve got more flesh on me bones. I must have been reincarnated more times than the Dalai Llama. ANNA:
(To herself) Oh god, one failed romance at a sensitive age and my fictional bloody creations start hanging around my flat!
MINNIE:
(Irish accent) Ah sure don’t take on so pet.
ANNA:
Who’s that?!
MINNIE:
(Normal accent) That’s me own idea - I was telling you. A torrid story of forbidden love during the Easter Rising. I play Molly Maloney the tragic fish girl, gunned down while running messages between Constance Markie-wics and the British officer, who’s her secret lover.
ANNA:
Well thank you for that well-researched suggestion. I can see the reviews now; ‘Anna Halpin, adds insult to colonial injury with her ridiculous retelling of Irish history’! (remove ‘colonial’) Anything else? Any 37
other suggestions you or my other more rounded characters wish to make? MINNIE:
In fact, emm, now you come to mention it, I’ve sort of been voted shop steward for the group, seeings as you and me have these little chats sometimes.
ANNA:
Shop steward! So you’re telling me that a bunch of characters from a pulp, paperback are unionised! (Throws away pill bottle) Jesus, I have got to get a grip!
MINNIE:
Oh excuse me Modom, not good enough for worker representation aren't we. (Yorkshire accent) Well let me give you a little warning Mrs., there's discontentment in the ranks. A growing unhappiness with working conditions and a general feeling that management has lost interest. Yes and what's more a growing politicisation among the workforce. (Anna pulls a face) You see, always guaranteed to put management on the defensive that. Just the words "growing politicisation" and they see the Red Army storming the Winter Palace.
ANNA:
And what would you know about worker representation or the Red Army?
MINNIE:
(Russian accent) I vas Tatyana.
ANNA:
Who?!
MINNIE:
(Cockney) The peasant girl in "Russian Resistance".
ANNA:
That was hardly an authentic reflection of the proletarian struggle.
MINNIE:
Well you wrote it! We're not talking about pension plans and overtime here, we're talking about our whole lives, our destinies. You’re not happy, and if you’re not happy we’re not happy. If you don't watch it you'll have a strike on your hands, a full-scale walk out, and try and find a bit of inspiration then.
ANNA:
Alright then comrade what do you want? Creche facilities?! I can't believe I'm having this conversation. What do you want me to do? Make Beaston Hall a lesbian commune?
MINNIE:
Might be interesting.
ANNA:
No it wouldn’t. It’d be silly! And anyway 39
what would my readers think? My readers are made up of a multitude of different women; house-wives, working mothers, schoolgirls, they're all looking for a bit of escapism, a bit of romance, a fairytale much as I’d like to give them a cold spoonful of feminist politics, they don't want it! MINNIE:
The Barbara Cartland Guide to Romantic Fiction, Rule Three; No Argy Bargy. Nice girls do not chain themselves to railings because that would make them feminists otherwise known as loud, ugly girls, who can’t get husbands.
ANNA:
Oh come on I don’t write like Barbara Cartland - my heroines always lose their virginity for a start. Anyway romantic fiction isn’t all Barbara Cartland, look at history; there’s the Brontes, Jane Austen. Jane Austen is a literary genius!!
MINNIE:
Why don't you write like Jane Austen then?
ANNA:
Oh fuck off!
MINNIE:
There’s no point getting narky with me - I’m only fictional.
ANNA:
Well then, you won’t mind if I give you a crippling spinal injury and put your legs in callipers will you? She goes to write but Minnie grabs the laptop.
MINNIE:
Don’t you dare!
ANNA:
I’m joking. Give that back!
MINNIE:
You weren’t joking last time when you hit me with that train. They pull the lap-top back and forth between them.
ANNA:
Piss off.
MINNIE:
Just give me that contraption. Minnie grabs her arm and bites it.
ANNA:
Aarghhhh! Jesus you are a substantial characterisation.
Scene Five 41
Suddenly Robert Beaston enters and separates them ; BOB:
Be still - you’re hysterical. He takes the laptop from Anna masterfully. Give me that! He slams it on the desk, then drains her cup of whiskey. She looks on gobsmacked.
ANNA:
Declan?!
BOB:
Lord Robert Beaston! At your service ma’am.
ANNA:
(Gibbering) Ah ha ha haa. Of course you are. Ha ha, who else would you be! Okay time to try and sober up (she starts slapping her cheek).
BOB:
I can do that for you. It’s one of my fortés.
ANNA:
No, no I’m fine. Lord Robert Beaston! (To herself) I wonder where I got the inspiration for you!
BOB:
Would one of you like to tell me exactly
what is going on? Myself and Monsieur Delacroix were attempting a quiet game of backgammon and now François has gone off in a pet. Minnie you know how sensitive he is. Now what are you rowing about? MINNIE:
We wasn’t rowing we was just having a discussion.
BOB:
A discussion? At the top of your voices whilst fighting over a pen?!
MINNIE:
She was trying to cripple me. She’s already run me over with a train!
ANNA:
Tell tale!
BOB:
Is that true? Is it?
ANNA:
Yes.
BOB:
Anna!
ANNA:
I was just demonstrating my authorial control.
BOB:
But why? We know you’re the author.
ANNA:
Because she keeps trying to make me 43
change things. MINNIE:
Who’s she, the cat’s mother?
BOB:
Minnie, be quiet!
MINNIE:
She could do with making you a bit less over-bearing.
BOB:
I’m not overbearing. I’m masterful.
MINNIE:
Well pack it in for half an hour will ya. If you want to join in the discussion - fair enough, we’re trying to sort out her love-life and my plot line, but don’t start coming on all masterful out here.
BOB:
I’m sorry. All that bluster’s not actually the real me, of course, it’s just the way I’m written.
ANNA:
What? Hold on a minute. That’s the way I wrote you, therefore it is the real you.
BOB:
Not really! So far Robert Beaston is always pretending to be someone he’s not, because he can’t believe Alice Fernchurch is exactly who she says she is. The real me has yet to appear.
MINNIE:
He’s got a point.
ANNA:
Well he appears at the end. You know, he finally confesses his love to Alice and explains how he was only pretending to be a drunk...
BOB:
And she’s supposed to fall for that?
ANNA:
(Exasperated) Yes, because she’s secretly fallen in love with him too.
BOB:
But then surely she’s fallen in love with the surly, blaggard he was pretending to be and not the sweet-natured, gentle person he really is.
ANNA:
Well...
BOB:
She’ll want all that rough, rugged stuff and she won’t be interested in my poetry and my pressed flowers. I like long walks and staring into the fire. I don’t like grabbing women by the wrists and pinning them to walls. In fact I’m not even sure if I like women at all.
ANNA:
You mean... You mean you might be gay?! 45
BOB:
How can I be gay or even a little happy, when I’m not sure who I am.
MINNIE:
Ah now Bob, don’t run away with yourself. You don’t have to worry he does like the ladies.
BOB:
Just one lady. Just one lady Anna. Gripping Anna’s hand. Anna looks at Minnie.
MINNIE:
Alice. Remember he’s in love with Alice.
BOB:
Why can’t I just tell her now, and then we could spend the rest of the book together getting on with our lives; having children, laughing, crying, having little tiffs - that sort of thing.
ANNA:
But that’s all too normal - there has to be some drama; pain, jealousy, insurmountable odds.
MINNIE:
You could give her leukaemia.
ANNA:
It’s been done. Anyway why don’t we ask Alice?! Where is she?
Minnie and Bob look at each other apprehensively. I mean if I’ve got you two large as life in my living room, I might as well have her in here too? BOB:
Em, she is indisposed.
ANNA:
Indisposed?
BOB:
Yes.
MINNIE:
Don’t beat around the bush Bob, tell her!
ANNA:
Tell me what?
MINNIE:
Alice is having an identity crisis.
ANNA:
I’m sorry?
BOB:
You keep changing her.
ANNA:
What do you mean?
BOB:
Mm. Look, here in chapter one Alice Fernchurch is; ‘fair-skinned and vivacious, a healthy, country-bred girl’, ‘she was often 47
to be seen bringing the poor orphans of the parish for cream teas on the village green’. But by chapter seven, which is only a week later remember; ‘her waif-like appearance touches him to the very heart, oh how he longed to encircle her tiny, tapered waist in his broad, strong hands’. MINNIE:
Yes, then by the time we get to this bit in the bedroom. Bob.
BOB:
She has become, ‘sylph-like in her flowing, diaphanous nightgown’.
MINNIE:
See? She’s a bit confused. One minute she’s a buxom beauty and the next...
ANNA:
She’s anorexic, yes I get the picture. Oh Jesus, I’m never going to get this book finished! What am I going to do?
MINNIE:
Well it’s hardly a crisis; buxom or boney! You’ve just got to make a choice.
ANNA:
Or Bob does!
BOB:
Me?
ANNA:
Yes. You have to fall in love with her. What
would you prefer, curvy or skinny? BOB:
(Amazed) One cannot reduce womankind to the merely physical!
MINNIE:
Well it has been done before, Bob.
BOB:
A woman is a person and her personality is inextricably intertwined with the spiritual, the intellectual and the sensual as well as the physical. Oh Anna there is a multiplicity of parts that make up that being which is blessed with the name woman!
ANNA:
I’ll keep her curvy. It’ll make it easier to grapple her into submission.
BOB:
Submission! Anna? Why must there be such a conflict?
ANNA:
Because, Lord Beaston, there always is! Deep down, every woman loves a rogue.
MINNIE:
Oh, so that’s it, just because your heart’s gone through the ringer, we’ve all got to suffer.
ANNA:
What are you talking about? 49
MINNIE:
Your love life, or lack of it, dictating the mood of this book. I mean where’s all this grappling come from? We never had all this grappling before.
ANNA:
It’s got nothing to do with my love life.
MINNIE:
It’s got everything to do with it. It’s got everything to do with your recent yearning, on the page or off it, for a bastard!
ANNA:
Declan isn’t a bastard!
MINNIE:
Changed your tune a bit, haven’t you?
ANNA:
Oh leave me alone. Bob and Minnie exchange looks. Bob comes over to Anna and takes her hand
BOB:
I sense there is something wrong. Something that is causing you pain at the moment.
ANNA:
It’s nothing. Really I’d rather not...
BOB:
You’re so beautiful in this light.
ANNA:
Er, thank you.
BOB:
Your skin is so soft, almost translucent. Oh Alice.
ANNA:
Anna.
BOB:
Forgive me, dear lady. I was carried away by the lilt of your tremulous voice and the animation of your beautiful face.
ANNA:
Mmm (having a hot flush) , excuse me... Bob. (To Minnie) What were we talking about?
MINNIE:
Being grappled into submission by a lovable rogue.
ANNA:
Alright, I give in. I admit it. My writing’s crap. My books are trash. My life’s a sham! Happy?
MINNIE:
Oh stop, you’re breaking me heart. You’re books aren’t trash! All I’m saying is, why can’t we ‘ave a bit of a laugh. All this pokerfaced, two-dimensionalism gets on my nerves.
ANNA:
What do you want me to do, stick some ‘knock knock’ jokes in the clincher? 51
MINNIE:
No! 'Ere though, I’ve got a good joke for you. What's pink and fluffy and never moves?
BOB:
I don't know.
MINNIE:
Barbara Cartland's clitoris! Anna and Minnie laugh uproariously
BOB:
What’s a clitoris?
ANNA:
You mean you don’t know?
MINNIE:
It’s a woman’s most precious thing, and her spice of life Bob.
BOB:
Ah I see, it is a riddle?
MINNIE:
A tongue-twister!
BOB:
You seem to have the advantage over me.
MINNIE:
Oh come on, don’t be coy. ‘Bud of womanhood’ ring any bells?
BOB:
Ah Yes. I think I have heard tell of this wondrous ‘place’.
ANNA:
Nowadays it’s called a clitoris.
BOB:
(Seductively) A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.
ANNA:
(Flustered) Yes, well, would that everyone thought like you.
MINNIE:
‘Ere turn it off Bob. She’s frustrated enough as it is.
ANNA:
Lord Beaston, you’re a man.
BOB:
Yes I certainly am. I may be tender and sensitive under this flinty exterior but I am still a man. And, like chaste Sir Galahad and other great heroes before me, I have kept myself pure for my true love.
MINNIE:
Have you?
ANNA:
Oh! I thought you would have had some experience... in that area.
BOB:
No, none.
MINNIE:
Not a sausage?
BOB:
I am vestal. 53
ANNA:
But... well... you do think about that sort of thing, don’t you. You know, have fantasies?
BOB:
Fantasies? I’m afraid you’ve lost me.
MINNIE:
Total lack of imagination.
ANNA:
Well a fantasy is like a sort of waking dream where you... make love to people in your head. I have one set on a train.
MINNIE:
Oh not that again.
BOB:
I fear I could not think of any young lady in... the way of which you speak, without dishonouring her good name.
MINNIE:
Don’t be daft Bob, it’s all in your head.
ANNA:
No, he’s got a point. I mean I used to worry in case the men in my fantasies felt used. I’d go to ridiculous lengths to just to make it seem like a mutual experience.
MINNIE:
You’re kidding.
ANNA:
No. I remember in one fantasy - that was set on a train as well, I like trains.
MINNIE:
Ye-es?!
ANNA:
Well, I was under the seat with this man in the sixty-nine position trying to achieve simultaneous orgasm, when my concentration goes and all of a sudden my mother appears in the luggage rack and I start wondering what sort of state the floor’s in.
BOB:
Ah.
ANNA:
Well finally the bloke, you know this faceless Adonis, says to me; “Look Anna, I’m a figment of your imagination to do with what you will! If I want a blow job I can have that in my own fantasy”. It was a bit of a break through for me.
BOB:
I see... em... What’s a train?
ANNA:
Look... none of that really matters. What I’m trying to say Lord Beaston, is that if you were involved in a relationship, a passionate relationship for, say, five months, what would that person have to say to make you disappear without a word? 55
MINNIE:
(Jumping in) “I’m pregnant.”?
ANNA:
Shut up.
BOB:
Well. (He thinks). Is your question hypothetical or is this a new plot twist? I think I could be persuaded to break my pledge of celibacy if you thought it would help in any way.
MINNIE:
You can keep your trousers buttoned. She’s talking about ‘real life’. Her real life. Her fella left her, for a duck!
BOB:
Can it be true!?
ANNA:
More or less.
BOB:
What happened?
ANNA:
Well I’d always wanted to meet a man who was good with his hands.
MINNIE:
Haven’t we all!
ANNA:
You know, a craftsman, like a carpenter.
MINNIE:
So it’s a Christ fixation.
ANNA:
Somebody capable but sensitive.
MINNIE:
Wearing sandals and riding a donkey?
ANNA:
And then it went and happened. Our eyes met across a crowded room, we were drawn to each other by an irresistible magnetic force. It was like, love at first sight. I had never experienced anything like it.
BOB:
What happened then?
ANNA:
It was amazing, by some unspoken pact we left the party together and the next thing I knew I was sitting at his kitchen table - the one he made himself - drinking tea and chatting.
BOB:
Yes?
ANNA:
And he seems to be that man. The man I’d been looking for. Then - I could hardly believe it, it was so romantic - he just leaned over and kissed me... and we ended up making love ‘til dawn. Minnie gives her a disbelieving look. 57
ANNA:
We did! And when I got home I spent the whole day floating around the house reminiscing about our night together. Getting little jolts in my stomach every time I remembered our love-making. Then I started fantasising about our next meeting and the meeting after that, until I’d imagined moving in with him, marrying him and starting a family! I’d just got to the part about rowing with my teenage daughter but still having the energy to reaffirm my sexual desire for her father when the doorbell rang and it was him. I nearly said; ‘our daughter is not getting her nose pierced and that’s final!’.
BOB:
And did he live up to your fantasy?
ANNA:
Oh he was better than a fantasy - he was real. We laughed a lot. We talked: easily, comfortably. I cooked him a meal. Even better, he cooked me one. I met his friends. It was all going wonderfully. And then...
BOB:
And then what?
MINNIE:
And then nothing. He pissed off and she hasn’t heard from him since!
BOB:
It cannot be.
ANNA:
I’m afraid it can.
BOB:
His behaviour is dishonourable.
ANNA:
What do you think I should do?
BOB:
It is clear that he must be made to propose marriage. Once a man and woman lie together then they are married in the sight of God. He must accept this truth or die! I will, of course, challenge him to a duel. Monsieur Delacroix will be my second. I hope he’s not a pistols man I do prefer a rapier myself.
ANNA:
Lord Beaston I appreciate your concern but that won’t be necessary.
BOB:
How can he behave in such a manner to one of the finest, most beauteous women I have ever set eyes on. He deserves to die! Oh Alice. Alice let me take you in my arms and show you the worth of a real man. He takes her in his arms.
ANNA:
Lord Beaston! 59
BOB:
Call me Robert.
MINNIE:
I think you’ve frustrated his sexual urges for the last time.
BOB:
Alice, Alice.
ANNA:
I’m Anna! Anna! Hold on. I think I’m having some inspiration.
Scene Six The Book. MINNIE:
(She is animated as if in the book) "Oh Miss Alice will the rain never stop. When you suggested we ride out over the moors in the lovely Autumn sun, who would have thought less than an hour later the weather would change so suddenly, our horses would bolt from under us prompted by the terrifying lightning and we would be stranded here in this broken-down lean-to, and you with your badly twisted ankle and all. Oh Miss Alice let me run across the moors in this torrential rain and fetch help."
ANNA:
Oh no my dear plucky Minnie. You must
not venture out, you have done too much for me already without sacrificing your life on these treacherous moors. MINNIE:
But my lady we may die of the cold before morning, though if I must go someday, then to die here with you would be a blessed way to meet my end.
ANNA:
Oh Minnie you are so brave and plucky. Braver and pluckier than I could ever be.
MINNIE:
But Miss Alice there may yet be hope. They must have missed us by now at the Hall, perhaps Lord Beaston has set out to find us.
ANNA:
I would rather the devil himself should rescue us than that arrogant drunkard! Now I think again Minnie perhaps you should try and get to the village and gain us some assistance".
MINNIE:
(Aside) Oh thanks a bunch! (As book) "Oh madam I will bring you relief as fast as I can".
ANNA:
She rushes out into the night but just as she has disappeared into the lashing rain 61
and swirling mists, none other than Lord Beaston appears at their little shelter. He enters the shack! Alice jumps to her feet in surprise. MINNIE:
Only to fall over again being as her ankle was so badly twisted Anna has to fall over.
ANNA:
Ow!
MINNIE:
And moved beyond control by her distress, Lord Beaston sweeps her up in his strong arms. Bob looms towards her.
ANNA:
Hold on. Minnie you can play Alice.
MINNIE:
Ooh ta. She swaps places with Anna.
ANNA:
She struggled weakly - her heart beating a wild tattoo. She tried desperately not to look into those dark smouldering eyes that pierced her very soul.
BOB:
‘Stop struggling you little fool'.
ANNA:
He rasped, his voice like gravel.
BOB:
'I'm trying to help you'.
ANNA:
She stopped struggling, it was no good his arms were like granite.
MINNIE:
(As Alice) 'Take your hands off me you drunken brute!'
ANNA:
She flung recklessly.
MINNIE:
'I am a woman and I expect to be treated as such.’
BOB:
'I know you're a woman.'
ANNA:
He breathed, barely controlling his growing passion.
BOB:
'I've known you were a woman since you came here.'
MINNIE:
(She shouts the line and slaps him in the chest) 'Take your hands off me.'
ANNA:
She gasped weakly. 63
MINNIE:
Oh sorry. ‘Take your hands off me’
ANNA:
Her will-power seeping away, she knew she couldn't resist him for much longer. But just as she felt she could hold out no more, Lord Beaston regained his composure and released her.
BOB:
‘I'm sorry Miss Fernchurch’.
ANNA:
He snarled.
BOB:
'I was forgetting myself. If you're not too much a lady to mount up on my horse with me I'll return you to The Hall.'
MINNIE:
'Very well Lord Beaston. If it will not inconvenience you too much!’ (Another moment of growing sexual tension broken by) ‘But wait, I sent my maid Minnie out to find help, shouldn't we find her first?' (Breaking out of the scene sarcastically) Oh no, Minnie's hard as nails, she'll be alright, but we must get you home you poor, vulnerable little poppet. And there's me like the big idiot, soaked to the skin and dead of pneumonia!
Scene Seven ANNA:
Minnie you’ve broken my concentration.
BOB:
And mine.
MINNIE:
Well I’m so sorry but I seem to have died! Now if you’re going to send me off on a mercy dash, in the pouring rain across the moors, why can't I wear trousers and hiking boots!
ANNA:
Because it’s not what women wore.
BOB:
I think your costume is extremely becoming.
ANNA:
That’s the first bit of inspiration I’ve had all week.
MINNIE:
(Petulant) Sorry!
ANNA:
Look I’m not about to do a major re-write just so you can wear a tracksuit alright, I'm afraid your stuck with your stays dearie!
MINNIE:
Yeah, well that’s another thing. 'Ere, I’ll have to loosen ‘em! Look at this blinkin' contraption! (She takes off her blouse). Talk about uncomfortable. I mean I'm not a 65
particularly big girl but some mornings it's like trying to strap down a bag of ferrets! 'Course if you don't wear 'em, and let everything hang out all natural-like, you're a loose woman. Loose, of course you're loose! Loose and free and comfortable. Not trussed up like a chicken. ANNA:
My heart bleeds for you.
MINNIE:
No it doesn’t! You couldn’t give a tinkers. You’re heartless that’s what you are. ‘Ere Bob, give us a hand.
BOB:
I… er... beg your pardon.
MINNIE:
Loosen me at the back will ya.
BOB:
Oh... well... if you insist. Like this? He loosens the ties at the back.
MINNIE:
Ooh Bob your hands are like ice.
BOB:
Well you know what they say; ‘cold hands, warm heart’. Is that better?
MINNIE:
Much better. ‘Ere I’m not falling out now am I.
BOB:
Mm? I don’t think so. Bend forward a little.
ANNA:
Would you prefer if I left!
BOB:
No, you’re quite decent.
MINNIE:
Ta Bob. At last I can take a deep breath.
BOB:
Perhaps you should sit down for a while.
ANNA:
Hello! Real person in the room!
MINNIE:
Alright, alright, keep your hair on. Talk about attention seeking. Now, what, exactly, is your problem?
ANNA:
Well I can’t bloody concentrate can I! Poor old Alice is two different shapes and... I just can't get the plot right.
MINNIE:
What do you mean you can't get the plot right? There is only one plot, you just has to revamp it, re-costume it and regurgitate it!
ANNA:
Oh very funny. And you're the expert are you? 67
MINNIE:
Well I am on the inside. There is a certain uniqueness to my perspective.
ANNA:
All right then clever clogs, you write something. Let's see what your "unique perspective" can come up with.
MINNIE:
Hang on a minute, call a union meeting. I don't remember anything in the terms and conditions about characters writing their own bloody stories. I mean, come off it, you'll have us cooking your dinner and doing your laundry next.
ANNA:
Oh I see, you won't write anything but you're happy to sit on my shoulder and moan all the time. Criticise, criticise, criticise - that's all you do. I don't think you've got one positive idea in your head. You may think my stories are rubbish, but listen sweetheart, without them you're out of an existence! Go on you write something. She pushes Minnie towards the desk.
MINNIE:
No, I don't want to.
ANNA:
You want a bit of self determination, then
sit down there and write something. MINNIE:
No, I don't want to!
ANNA:
Go on write.
MINNIE:
No!
ANNA:
Why not, why bloody not!
MINNIE:
'Cos I can't bloody write, you stupid cow! I can't read nor write can I!
ANNA:
Oh Minnie I'm sorry, I'm so sorry I forgot, of course, (quoting to Bob); "Minnie Crabtree had grown up the hard way, she'd never been to school unless you counted the school of hard knocks - of which she was an honours graduate. Never learning to read or write, she had supported her brothers and sisters from the tender age of seven after their mother and then their father were taken by the whooping cough. That dark, satanic mill was...
MINNIE:
Alright, alright, leave it out. You don't half like to pile on the misery. I do want to help you. I'd like to try and write something but you was the one what made me 69
illegitimate. ANNA:
Illiterate.
MINNIE:
Don't rub it in.
ANNA:
Well, you don't have to write... you can dictate and I'll write.
MINNIE:
What, like you was my secretary?
ANNA:
Exactly.
MINNIE:
So like, I'm the boss, I'm in charge?
ANNA:
Don't push it! Now do you want to help or not?
MINNIE:
Yeah alright. Where do we start?
ANNA:
Okay, now this is your brief; to finish the bedroom scene...
MINNIE:
Oh right, brilliant. I've got loads of ideas for that...
ANNA:
(Sternly) In the style of the genre!
MINNIE:
I know! Are you ready Miss Halpin, take a
letter... ANNA:
Minnie!
MINNIE:
Alright, alright, keep your hair on I'm only messing. The Book. So I'm in the wardrobe keeping watch over Miss Alice; when suddenly I hear a noise, I strains to peek through a crack in the wardrobe door and there I see Bob, er Lord Beaston, entering; 'Robert Beaston was a tall powerfully built man, (Bob acts out narrative) handsome in a dark, fierce way...’
BOB:
....that belied his inner tenderness.
MINNIE:
Yeah, yeah, that an all Bob. ‘And Minnie couldn't help noticing that, in spite of his constant drunkenness, her mistress was strangely attracted to him. He had easily picked the lock and moving with pantherlike stealth he crossed the velvety stillness to the bed - strangely sober for a man, who not an hour ago was reeling from a night of heavy indulgence. Gently like a loving 71
father, he brushed a stray lock from Miss Alice's face… She notices Anna isn’t playing the scene. Miss Alice’s face! Anna plays along And touched her lips with his.’ Bob tries to kiss Anna. ANNA:
And now you burst out of the wardrobe...
MINNIE:
Hold your horses! Now, I doesn't charge out of the wardrobe at this point because I am mightily intrigued by the behaviour of Lord Beaston. So instead I strains at the keyhole hoping for a bit of blue peek-a-boo, know what I mean.
ANNA:
Yes, thank you Minnie!
MINNIE:
But I strains a bit too hard, the door flies open, and I come tumbling out (she begins to demonstrate as she dictates). Lord Beaston swings around and on seeing me becomes drunk as a skunk again. He
advances on me swearing and cursing. BOB:
Get out of my sight you damned little spy!
MINNIE:
But I, being blessed with a good pair of lungs shrieks at the top of my voice and at last my mistress jumps up out of bed and on seeing Lord Bob threatening me, she hits him over the head with the nearest thing to hand, namely the chamber pot!
BOB:
Hold on a minute...
ANNA:
Oh yes that's great, and then he can stagger out cursing and Alice can be torn between his obvious evilness and her strange feelings for him.
MINNIE:
In a minute, I haven't finished yet. Unfortunately, it has been a long, cold night and the chamber pot is rather full which in turn causes Lord Beaston to become rather wet. As he blunders blindly round the room drenched in Miss Fernchurch's pee the two bold friends strap a large crinoline over his head. With a laugh of triumph Miss Alice kicks the strange, smelly creature out onto the landing shouting after him; "break into my bedroom would you, you cad!" And 73
after that the girls Decided to share their self-defensive skills with women all over the world - The End! BOB:
I am not an evil man and I refuse to be covered in… in...
ANNA:
Minnie!
MINNIE:
What?!
ANNA:
It was all going swimmingly until the potty full of pee - if you'll pardon the pun.
BOB:
I wasn't going to do anything untoward, I’m not that sort of man - I’ve told you.
ANNA:
No, of course you’re not. He just wanted to look at her beautiful form. You see he thinks she's spying for M. Delacroix and that's why he hates himself for falling in love with her and constantly pretends to be drunk!
MINNIE:
Well I'm sorry, but if I woke up to find some geezer leaning over me in the middle of the night I'd kick him in the hollyhocks first and ask questions later! Look I can't write your story for you.
ANNA:
Oh but Minnie you were doing so well... until the water-sports started. Won't you try again? Please.
MINNIE:
But it's all so predictable! She hates him and he hates her, so they must be made for each other. You write the same story over and over again. It’s ridiculous!
ANNA:
It’s realistic - love is pain!
MINNIE:
For you maybe!
ANNA:
Anyway, as it happens I do have a new idea - for a completely different type of story.
MINNIE:
Not a love story?
ANNA:
A serious historical docu-drama.
MINNIE:
No grappling?
ANNA:
No, no grappling! *It’s the story of these two women pirates I read about; apparently they were the scourge of the Caribbean back in the eighteenth century. Can you imagine?! Fierce as any man, merciless 75
with their foe but staunch friend and ally to each other. That’s the docu bit - I’ve just got to add the drama. It could be a fabulous, the only thing is I need a hook... (realising what’s she’s said and finding herself hilarious) get it? Pirate... hook. BOB:
(Amused) Ah yes, hook... Hook.
ANNA:
(Sudden idea) How about this; staunch friend and ally to each other... until one man came between them. Six foot of rugged power, his hair an unruly mane of black curls, his eyes like glinting marcacite he was Tyrone Chandler, Sheriff of Trinidad & Tobago. What do you think?
(ANNA:
No, no grappling! It’s the story of Grace O’Malley.
MINNIE:
And who’s she when she’s at home?
ANNA:
The pirate queen; gave birth at sea fighting Turkish invaders… From Mayo.
MINNIE:
(Sarcastic) Oh from Mayo.
ANNA:
You were the one said I should write something different. She was an
amazing woman Minnie; stood up to the queen of England, defended her clan, went through husbands like a knife through butter. That’s the docu bit - I’ve just got to add the drama. All I need is a hook... (realising what’s she’s said and finding herself hilarious) get it? Pirate... hook. BOB:
(Amused) Ah yes, hook... Hook.
ANNA:
(Sudden idea) How about this; stood up to the queen of England, defended her clan, blah, blah, blah until… one man stole her heart. Six foot of rugged power, his hair an unruly mane of black curls, his eyes like glinting marcacite, he was Sir Marcus Bingley, governor of Connacht and captain of the queen’s fleet. What do you think?)
MINNIE:
Oh bIeedin’ Nora, I give up!
ANNA:
What? Minnie ignores her.
ANNA:
What!? 77
Scene Eight BOB:
Well I love a good romance, I must say. I don’t think I’ll ever get bored of hearing about two people falling in love.
ANNA:
Oh Bob that’s so sweet.
BOB:
Perhaps I could have a go? If that’s not too much of an imposition.
ANNA:
Of course it’s not. That’s a brilliant idea. Yes, let’s have the male perspective.
BOB:
(Aside) At last some editorial control. (To Anna) The same scene?
ANNA:
Yes, if you don’t mind. You’re creeping into Alice’s room, and remember you’re torn between love and hate.
MINNIE:
And I’m in the wardrobe.
BOB:
Well would you play Alice again, I thought you were very good.
MINNIE:
(Chuffed) Really. Oh alright.
ANNA:
Who’s going to burst out of the wardrobe?
BOB:
Hold on Anna this is my version and there’ll be no bursting out of anything! Now Alice.
MINNIE:
Right Bob, where do you want me?
Scene Nine BOB:
Just lay down here on the ‘bed’. You’re sleeping. Anna you stay there - you’re Minnie in the wardrobe. Now. He shakes out, preparing for his role. The Book. ‘Suddenly, just as Minnie felt herself falling into sleep, she was jolted back to alert, wakefulness by the sound of the door being gingerly opened. Yes, there was no mistake. The door slid open and, none other than, Lord Beaston stepped out of the gloom. Minnie was paralysed with fear. Had he come, as she had suspected, to do her mistress harm? She must try to move, call out - but wait, what was this? Lord Robert Beaston...was crying. Yes, unmistakable now, the sound of sobbing. She watched entranced as he crossed to the bed and knelt as if in supplication beside Alice’s prone and sleeping figure. “Oh angel”, he murmered, “I cannot help 79
but love thee”. With his head buried in the counterpane he did not see, what Minnie clearly saw - her mistress’s eyelids flickering open. Alice was awake! She sat up slowly, and gently, so as not to startle him and lovingly touched his brow. They’re eyes met and within that instant all the fear and hostility of the previous weeks melted away and they were as Adam and Eve new formed in the garden of Eden. “Oh my darling’, he sobbed through tearchoked lips, ANNA:
‘tear-choked lips’!
BOB:
“how I have wronged thee”.
MINNIE:
(In her own voice) Hush my love. All that is past.
BOB:
I thought you were a spy. I thought you came to dupe my mother and harm our family and yet all that was my warped speculation. The more your innocence pronounced itself the more I loved you, and the more I love you, the more I felt it must all be trickery.
MINNIE:
Robert, your mother has told me of the evil
swindles brought to bear on this family in the past - but I swear to you now, on my life, I am innocent of any villainy or calumny and am only what you see before you, a poor governess. A poor stray, who has loved you since the moment she set eyes on you and for all your...ill treatment, has never stopped loving you. BOB:
But how could you? How could you love that insolent, roguish brute?
MINNIE:
Because I have seen the pure heart beating within. I have watched as you played with the children, I have eavesdropped as you read aloud to your poor, invalid mother, and, are you forgetting, I have been saved from almost certain death because these strong arms delivered me from the moor!
BOB:
Oh Minnie...
MINNIE:
Oh Bob... They kiss passionately.
ANNA:
Ahem... ahem hem. 81
They break apart Is that it? BOB:
(Very flustered) More or less. Em... I do apologise Minnie... I do hope I haven’t offended you in any way. I must go now... I have... some pressing matters... to attend to... ahem He exits.
MINNIE:
Bob! Bob? Ah, he’s all embarrassed. (beat) He’s nice Bob, isn’t he?
ANNA:
Yes, very sweet.
MINNIE:
Yeah... So what did you think?
ANNA:
What did you think?
MINNIE:
Oh, I liked it.
ANNA:
Yes, I thought you did.
MINNIE:
What’s that supposed to mean?
ANNA:
I just thought you applied yourself diligently to the genre.
MINNIE:
I’ll apply you diligently Mrs!
ANNA:
Well it was a bit different from your version wasn’t it?
MINNIE:
That’s because your brain has two sides!
ANNA:
Maybe I could combine them both somehow. I liked him getting hit with the potty, that was funny, but getting soaked with pee that’s just pornographic.
MINNIE:
It’s only porn if it’s warm.
ANNA:
(Pouring herself another drink) Okay you can shut up now! Isn’t there an off-switch to you?
MINNIE:
Yes, it’s called sobering up. And if you keep drinking at that rate I’ll be here all night getting bigger and bigger... She looms around the room repeating things she’s already said and zooming in and out of Anna’s face. Howdyado, I’m Minnie Crabtree./You writing anything today./Tell old Minnie 83
everything./Strong Bear smoothed his hands over her.../Not good enough for worker representation aren’t we?/I am a woman and I expect to be treated as such./Oh Miss Alice let me run across the Moors in this torrential rain./Oh Miss Alice let me run across the Moors in this torrential rain./Oh Miss Alice let me run across the Moors in this torrential rain./ There’s discontentment in the ranks./Let me give you a little warning.... ANNA:
What an earth are you doing?
MINNIE:
I’m being a more interesting hallucination.
ANNA:
Please stop you’re making me dizzy. I think I’m going to be sick. There is knock at the door Jesus! (She gets a shock). Who’s that?
MINNIE:
I don’t know, but if they’re knocking they’ll be real at any rate.
Scene Ten Declan is at the door.
ANNA:
Declan!
MINNIE:
(To herself) Oops she said the ‘D’ word.
DECLAN:
Hello... I was just passing.
MINNIE:
At two a.m.?
ANNA:
Declan... I thought you...
DECLAN:
I know, I know I should have rung.
ANNA:
I should have rung.
DECLAN:
I wanted to...
ANNA:
Yes? Pause.
MINNIE:
For God’s sake ask him in.
ANNA:
(To Minnie) Shut up!
DECLAN:
Is there someone with you?
ANNA:
Yes. No! No. Come in. 85
DECLAN:
Look I didn’t mean to interrupt anything, if...
ANNA:
There’s no one here, please come in. He comes in puts down his umbrella. God you’re soaked.
DECLAN:
Yeah. It’s raining. Awkward pause. They both go to speak together.
TOGETHER:
I should have rung. Again together.
ANNA:
Yes you should have.
DECLAN:
It’s okay...what did you say?
MINNIE:
Stand your ground.
ANNA:
Yes you should have rung.
MINNIE:
Don’t be passive.
ANNA:
You fucker.
DECLAN:
I’m sorry?
ANNA:
Well?
DECLAN:
How’s the writing?
ANNA:
Oh fine, well I’m finding it a bit... She stops suddenly and stares at him.
DECLAN:
(Nervously) Yeah?
ANNA:
What are you doing here? You don’t ring me...I assume...Now you turn up out of the blue and drip all over my carpet. What do you want?
DECLAN:
I don’t know. I’ve been very confused. Anna (he takes her hands) I think I really l... l...
ANNA:
Yes.
DECLAN:
Like you.
MINNIE:
Like!
ANNA:
What do you mean, like? 87
DECLAN:
I’m not sure. Look I’m sorry. I didn’t ring because I...I got busy.
ANNA:
Oh what, like you started seeing me during a slow period and then duck season started?
DECLAN:
No I...
ANNA:
I was worried. I thought you might be lying trapped under a huge duck.
DECLAN:
What?! You’re drunk.
ANNA:
Yes and you’re a bastard, but in the morning I shall be sober!
DECLAN:
Oh that’s original! She starts to cry.
DECLAN:
Anna? Anna I’m sorry. (He tries to hold her).
MINNIE:
Her pain broke through his stony exterior.
ANNA:
Leave me alone.
MINNIE:
She moaned in despair.
DECLAN:
Listen to me. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry I’ve made you feel like this. I was confused, unsure of myself, it all happened so quickly. (She is melting). I even thought you might just be using me as research for your book - our relationship. (She takes offence). I was afraid. Anna?
MINNIE:
He pleaded with her. Would she be his?
ANNA:
Get out of my house!
MINNIE:
But no it was not to be. She regained the tattered remnants of her composure.
ANNA:
Use you for research? What makes you think I’d write about you! My heroes are; strong-thighed bargeman and proud aristocrats. What would I want with a strong-thighed duck maker.
DECLAN:
I don’t just do ducks.
ANNA:
And another thing Mr. ‘I’ve got an ego the size of a barrage balloon’, you didn’t “make me feel like this”. I happen to be an alcoholic - it’s an occupational requirement. All great writers get shit-faced and suffer so 89
they have something to write about. So don’t think for one moment that my whiskey consumption is in any way connected to you. In fact I’d forgotten all about you ‘til you barged in here with your pathetic; “I like you Anna”. Oh please. Declan turns away. If you’re going to be sad, insecure and pathetic do it on your own time and leave me to my whiskey and my fucking genius! Minnie slaps her. Ow DECLAN:
Have you finished? Mm? Have you quite finished?
ANNA:
(Sheepish) Aha. Pause.
DECLAN:
(Angry and tearful) Right… Pause.
ANNA:
Oh Declan I’m so sorry.
DECLAN:
Not good enough! I’m leaving. He gets half way out the door.
ANNA:
Declan.
DECLAN:
What?
ANNA:
I like you too. Declan gives her the finger as he leaves.
Scene Eleven ANNA:
That wasn’t a sexual suggestion was it?
MINNIE:
No I don’t think he wants to tickle your...
ANNA:
Yes, thank you! I didn’t handle that very well.
MINNIE:
Well it depends what outcome you were looking for. If you wanted to totally alienate him and lose him forever - I’d say you handled it perfectly. Anna bursts into tears
ANNA:
I’m a horrible, selfish, stupid person. 91
MINNIE:
No you’re not. You’re a horrible, selfish, stupid person wallowing in self-pity. Do you need me any more because I’m tired?
ANNA:
Oh well I’m so sorry if I’m keeping you up. You didn’t bloody help matters any.
MINNIE:
I wasn’t the one who told him he was sad, insecure and pathetic!
ANNA:
Well that’s it. I had another chance and I blew it. He came round in the middle of the night in the pouring rain, to show me that when it comes to relationships, he is as vulnerable, sensitive and paranoid as I am. And what do I do? I behave like a drunken arsehole, and a drunken arsehole with no make-up on at that!
MINNIE:
(gently) Anna?
ANNA:
What?
MINNIE:
Are you going to do any more work tonight?
ANNA:
(Deflated) No, there’s no point.
MINNIE:
Well I’m off then.
ANNA:
(Contrite) Minnie don’t go - I’m sorry I shouted at you.
MINNIE:
That’s alright ducks. It’s been a long night.
ANNA:
Listen, you and... Bob.
MINNIE:
Yeah.
ANNA:
(Grudgingly). You’ve actually helped quite a lot tonight.
MINNIE:
Really? Oh well that’s good. So, I suppose Bob and Alice’ll live happily ever after will they?
ANNA:
No, I don’t think so Minnie.
MINNIE:
Eh? What’s going to happen then?
ANNA:
I think I’ll go right back to the beginning and start again. It might even be time for Minnie Crabtree to have a whole book to herself... perhaps even a series.
MINNIE:
Oh Anna really - you mean it. And what about Bob? 93
ANNA:
Bob?
MINNIE:
He could be in it too. How about this; she’s poor, he’s posh - love across the divide. (caught up in the idea). Course I should still get top billing, something like ‘The Crabtree Chronicles’. No, stuff alliteration - ‘The Crabtree Sagas’. What do you think?
ANNA:
One step at a time Minnie. Remember, I’m emotional disaster area just at the moment!
MINNIE:
Oh, ‘course you are, luv. D’ya want a cup of tea? Will I breathe on your pen for ya?
ANNA:
I’ll start tomorrow Minnie I promise, but right now I just want to go to bed and cry myself to sleep if you don’t mind!
MINNIE:
(Suddenly alert. Handing Anna a handkerchief) No don’t do that, wipe your eyes, blow your nose and give your cheeks a quick pinch.
ANNA:
What? Why?
MINNIE:
Well, I’ve just seen Declan coming back up the garden path. Ta ta!
ANNA:
Minnie don’t go.
MINNIE:
Good luck! (She disappears)
Scene 12 DECLAN:
(He comes right in) I forgot my umbrella!
ANNA:
Declan, I lied to you before. (Pause) I have been thinking about you... a lot... in fact pretty much all the time really. My problem is, that meeting someone, being attracted to them and all the things that used to be so exciting when I was sixteen, I now find absolutely terrifying. I’m not using you for research. I don’t write about my own experiences - I’d have a couple of good farces on my hands if I did. I like you for no other reasons or ulterior motives than that you are interesting, funny, sensitive, and that physically...
DECLAN:
Yes?
ANNA:
Well that... making love with you is very, very special.
DECLAN:
Anna...
ANNA:
I’m in love with you Declan and I know that 95
may come as a surprise after such a short time and I also know that your feelings for me... DECLAN:
Please Anna...
ANNA:
(Getting increasingly upset). No, let me finish. I also know that your feelings for me may not be the same; you ‘like me’, and that’s okay. If you just see me as a friend, of course, that’s wonderful in its own way and I may not be able to deal with that just at the moment but in the long term I know I’m looking forward to being great ‘mates’ with you but right now I’m going to have to ask you to leave because...
DECLAN:
Anna! I love you too.
ANNA:
What?
DECLAN:
I love you too. Oh Anna I’m sorry. I’ve been an idiot, a stupid, fucking, idiot. But not any more… I know how I feel and I’m not scared to say it; I love you.
ANNA:
Again. Moving towards each other - a seduction.
DECLAN:
I love you.
ANNA:
Again.
DECLAN:
I love you.
ANNA:
Again.
DECLAN:
I love... They are wrapped in a kiss. The End.
97
The Lost Letters Of A Victorian Lady
Edith Lampton is an extremely naïve, guileless young woman who lives a quiet life in the remote village of Marmsey-on-the-Wold and whose contact with the outside world is limited to her correspondence with her former governess. She is ill prepared for the bizarre adventures which overtake her following the death of her brother, a victim of multiple amputations. Edith unwittingly becomes embroiled in an international drug smuggling cartel, headed by the notorious Vicar of Marmsey, but is rescued by a wandering cowboy and discovers a new world of passion and forbidden pleasure. Her epic journey via Holland to an Irish rebel hideaway is a story of love, fortitude and impeccable manners. Written in mock epistolary style, this high-energy, physical comedy melodrama makes a virtue of minimal setting, sound effects and strong character playing. It runs at approximately forty five minutes with roles for two men and one woman. The female actor plays Edith and the male actors play everyone else; the constant doubling being an integral part of the comedy and style of the piece. The play was originally produced by READCO in Bewleys Café Theatre, Dublin as part of the Dublin Fringe Festival 1996. It was revived in 2004 by Bewleys Café Theatre. “an unashamed romp; it also has a strong satiric edge… very funny and clever.” Sunday Independent “Michelle Read proves her worth as a comic writer in this superbly original romp… a blistering hour of comedy.” 99
Sunday Tribune
Characters Edith
Performer 1
Dorcas, Kelly, Zop, Kloop/Vicar, Sailor
Performer 2
Loxley, Mother, Pieter, Maverick
Performer 3
101
The Lost Letters Of A Victorian Lady The set consists of a desk and a chair and three screens depicting a Victorian sitting room. The centre screen is back-lit to create silhouettes. There are two entrances on opposite sides. Edith is in silhouette with her quill. VOICE-OVER OF HISTORIAN: In the summer of last year an interesting discovery was made during renovation work in a Victorian house in Edinburgh’s Morningside district. In some respects not an original find, simply letters from a young lady to her former governess, and yet in their content quite revelatory. Edith Lampton lived in a small Shropshire village at the end of the nineteenth century and her amazing adventures shed light on a very different side to that supposedly delicate creature; the Victorian lady. The Lost Letters Of A Victorian Lady. EDITH:
Marmsey-on-the-Wold, September the 6th, 1888. She sits at the desk and writes. Dear Mrs McBride, Thank you for your kind enquiry after our health. Myself and Sebastian are both well indeed but mother, sadly, is on her deathbed and clings to life but by a short thread. Oh dearest Esme, how welcome your stoical cheeriness would be at such a time, the strain of mother’s sick room is almost overwhelming and Sebastian continues to run wild, but I cannot bring myself to act the disciplinarian and slap him as you have suggested. He is after all a man now and not
the little boy you used to chase round the scullery with the carpet-beater. Ah fond memories. It has taken all my energies to persuade him to enter the Harvest Festival threshing competition this afternoon. His idleness is rather a sore-point with mother and I thought to lift both their spirits with a spot of threshing. Loxley has taught him how it is done. Loxley enters in a hurry. EDITH:
Ah Loxley what news?
LOX:
You best come quick mum, it’s Sebastian.
EDITH:
I believe the contest is about to start. I’ll be along directly Loxley. (Loxley exits) Do write soon dear friend, with some of your marvelous fiscal advice. Fondest regards, Edith. Edith exits. Loxley enters.
LOXLEY:
Marmsey-on-the-Wold, October the 1st, 1888. He exits as Edith enters reading a letter.
EDITH:
Dear Mrs. McBride, Many a mickle macks a muckle. Thank you for these wonderful words of wisdom. Unfortunately mickles are hard to come 103
by in Marmsey just at the moment, but I have put an order in at the drapers. Sadly mother’s condition has not improved which makes her all the more demanding. The third parlour maid in as many weeks has left without notice and mother has taken to flicking porridge at the vicar. Our new cleric is not the most personable of men it is true, but I fear being pelted with cold oatmeal will do nothing to improve his mood. But what of little Edith you kindly ask? Well, apart from the stress of mother's sick room and Sebastian losing his arm in a threshing accident, Perf 2 screams off and is seen in silhouette for a split second, holding a severed arm. I am quite well. In fact, and, I’m sure that this will surprise you, I decided to take a job! There I have shocked you, I know it! The idea first came to me when I heard of several mining positions in North Wales and instantly set about attaching a Davy lantern to my best bonnet. Unfortunately it was rather unsightly and somewhat crushed the ostrich feather. Sebastian took one look at my attempts and laughed most cruelly. Oh Esme, he said, ‘when God was giving out brains, I was in the
queue at the drapers’. I said most emphatically, I was not and challenged him to fashion something elegant from of a straw bonnet and a large metal lamp, and in the end I became so cross I took your advice and slapped him hard across the face. Unfortunately I caught his eye with my confirmation ring, Perf 2 screams off and is seen for a split second in silhouette holding up an eyeball. ...and he has had to have it out. Eventually I decided against the pit, it all seemed more trouble than it was worth and every time I mentioned it Sebastian frothed about the mouth. I pointed out that a man with one arm, one eye and… one leg since Loxley left his axe in the parlour… Perf 2 screams off and is seen for a split second hopping and holding a severed leg. Loxley looks at the audience knowingly. Loxley do put that somewhere safe. LOXLEY:
Yes ma’am. He exits. 105
EDITH:
....could not provide for a sick mother and a sister, but I feel he is very sensitive at present, what with all his unlucky little accidents, and so I have defered to him as the man of the house. Loxley enters and gives Edith a pair of sugar tongs. He looks at her longingly and exits. But enough of my troubles Mrs. McBride, it grows dim apace and mother's scabs need draining. A fond adieu, Edith. Edith exits. Dorcas enters manically with a tea tray
DORCAS:
Marmsey-on-the-Wold, November the 6th, 1888. Edith enters with sugar tongs, Dorcas puts down tray.
EDITH:
Well done Dorcas. During following Edith sits and pops sugar into her cup with the tongs. There is then a tussle over who gets to pour. Dear Mrs. McBride, One blessing I have not hitherto mentioned is our new maid Dorcas. She has been with us two whole weeks now and shows no signs of leaving! She is
a lovely girl, a little eccentric in her ways by dint of the fact that she was raised by wolves, (performer 2 howls), but kind and helpful and a wonder at keeping foxes away from the chicken coop. (She sips tea). Mmm, Dorcas well done! Dorcas – kitchen! Kitchen! Dorcas exits with tray and howls for joy. In answer to your kind enquiry mother is a little recovered, but Sebastian, I am sad to say, is quite the reverse. He is odd and irritable, and has taken to spending a lot of time at the Chinese laundry. I do try to reprimand him, but since the eye incident I am rather loathe to adopt anything more than a stern tone. One ray of sunshine in these otherwise stygian times, is that we are to have a visitor, a Master Kelly! Do you remember how father was stationed in Ireland when he spontaneously combusted, well apparently it was Master Kelly he was trying to shoot as he burst into flames. I first made the aquaintance of this pleasant Irishman just after the tragedy. He had kindly let bygones be bygones and in a spirit of supreme forgiveness had come to Marmsey to sing at the funeral. After that mother became firm friends and ever since she has been sending him large boxes of rifles. Everybody in the 107
village is at sixes and sevens to have a foreigner in our midst - Loxley is as giddy as a goat! Loxley enters. But speak of the gamekeeper and he will appear. LOX:
Ma’am, it’s time for your lesson.
EDITH:
Ah Loxley, you are too good. Loxley has come to take me in hand Mrs. McBride. He wraps a lasoo around her. Each week he patiently teaches me a new country skill. Just now I am learning how to hog tie a heifer. Today it is my turn to be the heifer.
LOX:
There you are Miss Edith, now off you go. Loxley slaps her bottom and she moos and runs to stage right. With all fondest regards, Edith. They exit. Dorcas enters.
DORC:
Marmsey-on-the-Wold, February the 15th,1889. She exits with teacup.
FX: SNATCH OF SONG; "WHEN I'M CALLING YOU, AND YOU ANSWER TOO”. Edith enters EDITH:
Dear Mrs. McBride, I am sorry not to have written sooner but I have been frightfully busy, what with the crippled widows Valentine's dance and, of course, the advent of the mole-shanking season. Poor Loxley has been trying to teach me how to shank a mole for two weeks now, but I am still all fingers and thumbs! You will be sad to hear mother is much worse. She has not been herself since Master Kelly’s visit, and I remember it was just before he arrived that she became particularly agitated. Back in time. Performer 3 enters as Mother, a wild, red-haired ‘beauty’ in a nightdress.
MOTHER:
(Distracted) Edith. Edith is he come yet?
EDITH:
Oh Mama, you will catch your death.
MOTHER:
Is he come, is he here?
EDITH:
He will be here any minute I’m sure. 109
MOTHER:
Edith I want to tell you something. You know your father’s accident...
EDITH:
Oh let us not dwell on that sad event. Let us think of happier times. Do you remember when you planted shamrock in father’s rose garden.
MOTHER:
Aye, that I do. I was lucky his hunting rifle jammed. I hated him Edith, hated him!
EDITH:
Oh mama, try not to excite yourself. He was a difficult man, there’s no denying it, but I believe it was the tough life of a soldier that made him that way. I worry that Sebastian will follow in his footsteps and run away to the army. Although that’s not very likely, as he does only have the one leg and running, sadly, is not an ability he flourishes in. FX: HORSE WHINNEY.
MOTHER:
It’s him!
EDITH:
Just then the tall Irishman entered... FX: KELLY’S MUSICAL ‘STING’ AND CROCKERY SMASH. Kelly enters
…and I dashed to the kitchen to supervise Dorcas’s tea-making. Edith exits. KELLY:
Oh Caitlin, Caitlin is it really you?
MOTHER:
Aye Sean, and on my deathbed in this alien land. You have found me in a lucid moment. My mind is going Sean. The strain is finally too much! But was it worth it? Did I do my part?
KELLY:
Aye that you did my darling girl. Your undercover work has saved many an Irish rebel’s life. You’re sacrifice is hailed throughout the land.
MOTHER:
And what do they say of me Sean?
KELLY:
They sing Caitlin. They sing The Ballad Of The Sweet Rebel Girl. (He sings) Oh with charms-a-plenty she did woo a British nave The captain of the garrison became her willing slave Oh she.......
MOTHER:
Sean! There’s little time and much to say! 111
KELLY:
Aye, aye. Sorry my love. But I have suffered too. Knowing every minute of every day that you were here in the grasp of our enemy and that man was raising our child. Our daughter! And now it’s too late. (He sings) Her mission was completed, but she was not going home....
MOTHER:
Sean!
KELLY:
Sorry.
MOTHER:
Yes, Edith is our child but she has been raised as an English lady. I told her nothing for her own safety and now I am dying I fear for her. Oh Sebastian is his father’s son; hard, dangerous, mentally deranged.
KELLY:
And Edith is our daughter; delicate, vulnerable.......
MOTHER:
...Gullible. Edith is gullible! She needs minding. It’s too dangerous for you to stay here, but will you send someone you trust to watch over her?
KELLY:
I will Caitlin. I have the very man and I promise by the green, the white, and the gold that I will keep her safe, only don’t go, don’t die. Don’t die my wild, green-eyed beauty.
MOTHER:
(Gasps) I must Sean, I cannot hold on any longer. I will never see thee more my love ‘til we meet again in Tir Na N’og. But Sean one last thing.
KELLY:
Yes Caitlin, (he sings softly) She reached her hand out to him upon her dying bed, and with the last breath that she had this is what she said....
MOTHER:
Sean! Beware The Vicar Of Marmsey! Remember that! Now go my love, before you are discovered.
KELLY:
(Overcome, he salutes) Farewell Caitlin. Farewell my green-eyed girl! (He turns bumping into Edith entering with broken tea things?) Farewell Edith! (He presses her hand to his bosom and exits).
EDITH:
Master Kelly, Master Kelly? Mother why has Master Kelly left. What did you say to him? What did he say to you? Mother shouts and rambles as Edith helps her off.
MOTHER:
We will be free! Men and women of Ireland unite against the common enemy that holds our country in bondage. Ar Chungah! Tiochai Ar La! Eight hundred years of oppression! (she repeats until off). 113
EDITH:
Yes mother. Yes dear. Now don’t forget to take your medicine. (to audience) Oh dear. FX: FUNERAL MARCH. Loxley and Dorcas enter slowly wearing black armbands.
LOXLEY:
Marmsey-on-the-Wold, April the 11th, 1888 Edith follows them on and sits. They put an armband on Edith. Tableaux.
EDITH:
Dearest Esme, sad news, mother finally passed away last night. Dorcas and Loxley exit. I took her, her usual cup of milky brandy at nine o'clock and found she had wrapped herself in a large green, white and orange sheet, which came, I know not where from. The exertion had obviously been to much for her and she had expired. But she had a placid smile upon her face and her favourite rifle gripped to her bosom. Dorcas was quite bereft and howled until dawn, then scampered away and hid herself under the
stove. Mother was a strange woman in many ways and I often felt I never truly knew her. Still I shall miss her unique Shropshire accent and beautiful clog dancing and know she will long be remembered in Marmsey. The family lawyer, came to offer his condolences this morning, and then we set about the frightening business of money. It seems our affairs are not in good order and Sebastian’s handling of the paperwork in recent times, has left certain 'inconsistencies'. Mr. Nesbitt wanted to take the books away to ponder over them some more, much against Sebbi’s wishes. Eventually there was an unfortunate tussle in the hall before our elderly lawyer showed himself the more determined, and of course the more endowed with limbs. Dear friend it is all quite ghastly. I am so glad we only have this cosy little manor to maintain or I'm sure I don't know what we'd do. Thankfully Dorcas is very good at keeping our costs down and makes the most delicious stews from things she catches in the woods. Now if only I could prevail upon her to comb her hair and cut her finger nails for the funeral. Yours in mourning, Edith. 115
FX: MORRIS DANCE. Dorcas and Loxley morris dance on. Dorcas exits. LOXLEY:
Marmsey-on-the-Wold, May the 1st, 1889. Loxley exits. Edith takes second black armband from her pocket and puts it on.
EDITH:
Dear Mrs McBride, I'm afraid to report, less than a week after we buried mother, another tragedy has struck at the heart of our family. I have had to shoot Sebastian! Mother’s funeral was a touching affair. Several unknown men fired a volley of shots over her grave and then disappeared before I could offer them sherry. Sebastian, however, refused to attend the ceremony and his behaviour became more and more odd thereafter, particularly when Mr. Nesbitt summoned me to his chambers early last week. Dear old Nesby seemed very agitated. He told me, in hushed tones and with many a nervous glance over his shoulder, that Sebastian had put all our money in a Dutch business venture. Well imagine my relief dear friend, indeed it explained his recent trips to Holland with his strange wooden leg and false eye. Mr. Nesbitt continued to talk to me with increased urgency, but
all I could think of was flying home to congratulate Sebastian. However when I did skip into the parlour, enfold him in a sisterly embrace and praise his wise investment he took great umbrage and unhooking the whaling harpoon rushed out into the gathering dusk. I, in great consternation, hastened after him, running into the back of him just outside the front door; his hopping is still not the strongest. With all manner of foul oaths he declared; ‘Nesbitt must die!’. It was then, dear friend acting quite without thought, that I wrestled the whaling harpoon away from him, and before he could dive under the privet, shot him through the heart! FX: HARPOON. For a split second we see Sebastien in silhouette being shot, he screams for the last time. Edith looks bashful. It was very quick and the new vicar said it was the only thing to be done. But if all that is not awful enough, mother had taken the absolute last space in the churchyard and now there is nowhere to bury dear Sebastian. Whatever shall I do dear Esme. Please advise me. Your troubled friend, Edith. 117
Edith removes both armbands. LOXLEY:
Marmsey-on-the-Wold, May the 4th, 1889
EDITH:
Dear Mrs McB, Thank you for your kind letter of condolence and your wonderful suggestion for the disposal of Sebastian's remains. Unfortunately the vicar has advised me that it would not be quite proper to have him stuffed and mounted. But not to worry my dear, the problem is all but solved. Sebastian's Dutch friends have asked to play host to him one last time and give him burial in Holland. I have decided to accept this kind offer and am busy making preparations. Dorcas! Dorcas! Dorcas is helping me with my packing. Dorcas runs in with some bloomers in her mouth. Yes, good girl, now trunk! Trunk! Dorcas exits and ripping cloth is clearly heard. Oh dear. I leave straight away and am to travel by myself to the Dutch port, where I am to be met by a Monsieur Kloop, an erstwhile friend of Sebastian’s. Do you know dear friend, If it were not part of such a sad mission I would almost be looking forward to my first journey away from
Marmsey and all that is familiar. But then my thoughts stray back to poor Sebastian. We have put him in the scullery on blocks of ice and you will be pleased to know I had kept all of his missing limbs in a large pickle jar at the back of the larder, although I couldn't find the eye and suspect that mother, in one of her deliriums, mistook it for a gob-stopper. The vicar suggested lining the coffin with poppy seeds to allay putrefaction. The Chinese laundry has kindly supplied the seeds. Loxley comes forward sheepishly with a bloody bag in his hand, which he gives to Edith. LOXLEY:
(Distraught) Don’t go Miss Edith. You musn’t go.
EDITH:
But Loxley I must.
LOXLEY:
Oh alright then but take this ma’am, for luck!
EDITH:
Why thank you. (She looks inside bag). Oh dear. An animal's foot is indeed for luck, dear Loxley but I fear this is rather bulky what with the hoof and all. (She hands it back to him). Now Dorcas (Dorcas enters), Loxley. I shall not be gone for very long, indeed I shall be back before you know it and I am counting on you to look after things until my return. I feel sure I can depend on you both. 119
Goodbye now Loxley, Dorcas. God bless. LOX/DORC:
Goodbye Miss Edith. FX: DORCAS/LOXLEY LOVE MUSIC. Dorcas and Loxley move the table and place the trunk on it. They then sit down and notice each other. Loxley offers Dorcas the bloody bag, she takes it thrilled. They look at each other adoringly. They hold hands and scamper off together. Although this is basically a set change it should be played as a short love scene. FX: HISTORIAN 2/DUTCH ANTHEM/MARKET PLACE Edith enters, opening the curtains on one screen to reveal a field of tulips and a windmill.
HISTORIAN V/O: Here the story moves to Holland. It was unusual for a country lady of this period to travel unaccompanied, but of course, research has subsequently shown that the unsuspecting Edith Lampton was being used as a drugs courier by the infamous Vicar of Marmsey, later convicted of trafficking in opium. EDITH:
(Holding tulip). Amsterdam, May the 8th, 1889
Edith moves downstage, waving and smiling as if she is in the bustling market place and shouts ‘bonjour’ a lot. As sound fades out . EDITH:
Bonjour, bonjour. Dear friend, (Highly elated) I did it! I have arrived in Amsterdam and it is all so wondrous; pungent cheeses, tulips, strangers and great, long salamis hanging from every rafter. But dear friend, I am getting ahead of myself. The journey itself was far from pleasant. A cold carriage, a storm-tossed boat and finally a nasty man in uniform, or Dutch customs official, as I later understood. Monsieur Zop, the customs official accosts her.
ZOP:
Papers! Edith flinches at a the sight of him. He snatches her papers. He reads them suspiciously and eyes her up and down. He then folds them and she goes to take them back.
ZOP:
Not so fast Miss. Please to raise your arms like so. Pieter! Perf 1 rushes in, frisks Edith and rushes out again. Edith is agog, she goes to take her papers again. 121
ZOP:
Not so fast Miss. What ‘ave we ‘ere? He bangs his fist loudly on the trunk and makes Edith jump.
EDITH:
My...my...my brother’s coffin.
ZOP:
What is inside?
EDITH:
(Confused) My brother?
ZOP:
Aha! You don’t sound too sure Miss? (Looks at papers) Miss Lampton. Pieter! (Perf 1 rushes back in stage right with an axe). Open it up!
EDITH:
(Throwing herself across the coffin) Stop! (to audience) I know you, dear Esme, would have reduced them to abject apology within minutes, but all I could do was burst into tears. Edith sobs uncontrollably. Perf 1 rushes out. Please do not persecute me sir. I am but a woman!
ZOP:
I am only doing my duty.
EDITH:
My journey has been long and tiresome in the extreme.
ZOP:
This is not my problem.
EDITH:
Fourteen hours strapped to the top of a coffin with no ladies facility and a buffet trolley that passed but rarely.
ZOP:
What is this to me.
EDITH:
My entire family dead sir! She drops to her knees grasping his arm.
ZOP:
You are touching my jacket.
EDITH:
My life turned upside down. Zop is overcome with embarrassment.
ZOP:
Oh very well. Welcome to Holland (He throws down her papers). Now go away! He exits.
EDITH:
And just like that they let me through. Now to find M. Kloop! FX: MUSIC. Perf 1 enters as The Maverick. 123
MAVERICK:
Miss Lampton? Edith Lampton?
EDITH:
Monsieur Kloop?
MAVERICK:
No ma’am I ain’t no Kloop! Sean sent me. I’m here to git you’re ass outta this corn pone mess.
EDITH:
I’m sorry I don’t speak Dutch.
MAVERICK:
Dutch! Lady I ain’t Dutch, I’m American, a Yankee! I’m Maverick. They call me The Maverick.
EDITH:
How do you do Monsieur The-Maverick. But where is M. Kloop?
MAVERICK:
You don’t get it lady. We gotta get outta here. Kloop may be some spotted-assed baboon but the Vicar Of Marmsey sure ain’t....
EDITH:
Ah, you were sent by the vicar?
MAVERICK:
Ma’am try and understand me if you can; the vicar of Marmsey is a no-good, low-down, mean-assed, son-of-a-bitch who means to git you killed and I have been entrusted by my good friend Sean Kelly, who brung me outta the wilderness when I was wanted in every state in the union for a crime I swear to you I never committed. I have been
entrusted to bring you to Ireland and I intend to honour that promise whether you like it or not and you lady, you gotta help me because we gotta go now before this Kloop guy turns up and fills us both fulla holes! EDITH:
Monsieur The-Maverick was extremely excitable and I could only understand a few words as his English was very poor, a seemingly common failing among foreigners. I managed to deduce that he had been sent by the vicar and was keen for us to depart. I was concerned that we had not yet met M. Kloop, but as luck would have it he appeared at that very moment.
KLOOP:
Kloop at your service madam and may I offer my most heartfelt condolences on your loss.
EDITH:
Why thank you. I had all but forgotten poor Sebastian. Allow me a moment sir, to compose myself.
KLOOP:
But of course. (Turning to Maverick) I don’t think I’ve had the pleasure Mister …?
MAVERICK:
They call me The Maverick and I’m here to look after Miss Lampton’s interests!
KLOOP:
Her interests? 125
MAVERICK:
I know your game Mister Kloop.
KLOOP:
Oh do you?
MAVERICK:
You and your boss the vicar of Marmsey.
KLOOP:
Well you had better play along then if you want Miss Lampton to live! Otherwise things could get messy.
MAVERICK:
Why can’t you just let her go. You’ve got what you wanted.
KLOOP:
She’s our cover, don’t you understand.
MAVERICK:
I understand one thing - you filled that coffin full of opium, you damn low-life.
KLOOP:
You’re very astute Mr. Maverick, for an American.
MAVERICK:
Yes I am sir. I’m also one ornery son of a gun. You harm a hair on her goddamn head Kloop and I’ll stick your clogs where the sun don’t shine.
KLOOP:
Charming I’m sure Mister Maverick, but time is of the essence. Come Miss Lampton, you’re carriage awaits.
EDITH:
Why thank you Monsieur Kloop. They help her up onto the table. Maverick sits beside her on the trunk, Monsieur Kloop sits in front of the table on the chair.
KLOOP:
Giddyup. FX: HORSE WHINNEY/CART CLIP CLOP
EDITH:
The journey to my brother's final resting place was uneventful. M. Kloop was engrossed in skillfully guiding our little cart along the narrow streets and M. The-Maverick seemed lost in thought. Fearing his lack of linguistic ability was making him shy I attempted, as you would have done, to offer him the rudiments of our language. (She taps him and points) WINDMILL, WINDMILL. (Maverick looks at her and shakes his head in disbelief.) However, I fear he was slow-witted for he would just stare at me uncomprehendingly.
MAVERICK:
Okay so she’s dumb, she doesn’t know what’s going on. That’s good. I’m gonna keep it that way, that’ll be better for her! She’ll have to see her brother buried, then we’ll make our escape! I just gotta keep her happy. Hey I got an idea!
127
He takes a bottle from his pocket, takes a slug and passes it to Edith. EDITH:
Oh thank you. IS IT MEDICINE? He nods humouring her. She takes a slug and coughs.
MAVERICK:
Yup, that’s right little lady. The kind of medicine that makes you feel just fine. Kloop, where the hell are we going?
KLOOP:
Mr. Maverick, I don’t really think that’s any of your business - Miss Lampton, as you have ascertained is providing my cover, you, as I seem to remember are an uninvited guest!
MAVERICK:
Well this guest is looking to git mighty uppity if he don’t git some answers right now!
EDITH:
Oh look everybody tulips!
MAVERICK:
I’m waiting.
KLOOP:
Very well, if you insist. We are merely stopping for the night before going on to ‘Sebastian’s final resting place’ in the morning. The will both be free to go. Satisfied Mr. Maverick!
MAVERICK:
Hell no, Mr. Kloop! I don’t make a habit of dealing with the potboy, I wanna know what the head honcho says. I wanna meet the Vicar!
KLOOP:
Oh you will Mr. Maverick. Have no fear, you will!
EDITH:
I was tired, hungry and not a little dirty, but as the two men chatted affably I felt an elation deep in my very soul. Oh M. Maverick, you’re not still cross with me I hope.
MAVERICK:
(Putting his arm around her) You ain’t so bad with a naggin of whiskey inside you, lady.
EDITH:
M. The-Maverick’s attitude had also softened towards me somewhat and swept along by the moment as I was, I couldn’t bring myself to reprimand him for his forwardness and as the last rays of the sun disappeared… (It becomes night) …we finally turned into a stable yard.
KLOOP:
Whoa!
EDITH:
I suddenly felt very tired and not a little dizzy and as I stepped down
from the cart, Mrs.
McBride, I fainted dead away. She faints into Maverick’s arms. He pulls away and lays her on the desk. Kloop goes to touch her. 129
MAVERICK:
Take your hands off her Kloop, and keep outta my way - I don’t like your face.
KLOOP:
Very well Mr. Maverick, but don’t try anything silly. I shall be close by. Should you make a run for it, be aware that you are surrounded by a labyrinth of dark alleyways, crawling with gangs of knifewielding psychopaths, all eager to do my bidding! Sleep well. He exits with the trunk, laughing maniacally.
MAVERICK:
When I git my hands on that Vicar I swear... Gee you look kinda angelic when you sleepin’. He prises bottle from her hand and she wakes.
EDITH:
Oh M. Maverick I have had the most vivid dreams and I feel so happy.
Can’t you understand me
even a little. MAVERICK:
I can understand you just fine.
EDITH:
Oh you strange foreign man you are making me feel most peculiar, (she puts his hand on her breast). Can you feel my heart beat - it’s going pitter-pat, pitter-pat...
MAVERICK:
Miss Lampton, I... Miss Lampton... Oh Edith! They kiss. FX EDITH/MAVERICK LOVE MUSIC. They dance round the table in a Buzby Berkelystyle, romantic way and then fall asleep on it. The lights change and Edith wakes up.
EDITH:
Amsterdam, May the 9th 1889. Dear Mrs McBride, I have just awoken on this beautiful new Dutch day. You will never guess but last night we slept al fresco on the cart. Oh it was very cold but M. Maverick kept me warm by making himself my blanket and laying close on top of me and as we drifted off to sleep, I felt an exquisite euphoria engulf me in great rhythmic waves.
MAVERICK:
Mornin’ darlin’ Kloop rushes in.
KLOOP:
Excuse my intrusion Miss Lampton. We are, as is the custom in this country, to bury your brother at dawn, and so must make all haste to the cemetry. Perhaps you would be so kind as to help me with the coffin Mr. Maverick. 131
They load the coffin back onto the desk and get on. EDITH:
Dear M.Kloop I have not yet had a chance to extend my most heartfelt thanks to you.......
KLOOP:
Thank you. Do get on.
EDITH:
Indeed everyone in Marmsey also extends their thanks....
KLOOP:
(He shoves Edith up onto desk) Yes, Yes get on!
EDITH:
M. Kloop was extremely anxious to leave and as we sped away over the cobbled streets, we narrowly missed a group of militiamen who seemed keen to converse with us. FX: CHASE MUSIC. Silent movie style cart chase. After a truly hair-raising journey, we have arrived at a large cemetery just outside Amsterdam. It is a lonely and desolate place with three graves freshly dug, giving Sebastian a choice.
MAVERICK:
I’m watching every move you make Kloop!
KLOOP:
Well watch this.
Kloop knocks out Maverick - Edith is oblivious. I can see no sign of a priest so I shall take a moment to pray. She kneels and prays. Behind her Kloop takes out a cosh and creeps up on her. I had misunderstood Sebastian. He had been diligently working to increase the family store and all I could do in return was chafe and scold and shoot him with a whaling harpoon. She prays again - Kloop tries again but Maverick wakes up and they wrestle silently behind Edith. Until they break as Edith turns. MAVERICK:
Edith get back, this man is not who he says he is....
KLOOP:
Brilliantly surmised Mr. Maverick. He rips off his cravat to reveal his dog collar.
EDITH:
Vicar!
KLOOP:
Yes Edith it is I...
MAVERICK:
The Vicar of Marmsey! 133
EDITH:
Have you come to officiate.
VICAR:
You just don’t get it, do you Edith. FX: GUNFIRE AND SHOUTING .
VICAR:
Blast! He runs off with ‘coffin’.
EDITH:
Vicar where are you going. Wait for me. Look M. Maverick the militiamen. Do you think they are firing a twenty-one gun salute? Maverick throws her over his shoulder and runs round desk.
EDITH:
Put me down! Put me down you scoundrel! (He puts her down). How dare you sir! (she slaps his face). I am missing my own brother’s funeral! Vicar wait for me.
MAVERICK:
Jesus! I cannot believe you woman! He coshes her on the back of the head.
EDITH:
How strange the constitution of woman, that emotional fatigue combined with the constrictures of corsetry can cause a severe palpitation of the brain. Edith collapses into his arms.
MAVERICK:
Sorry baby, but it’s for your own good! He lays her on desk and exits. FX: THE DOCKSIDE - SEAGULLS ETC. In porter’s waistcoat performer 2 removes the portrait of Victoria on one screen to reveal a woman with a rebel flag.
PERF 2:
Kingstown, Dublin, Ireland. May the 14th, 1889. Excuse me ma’am, (he rouses Edith), we’ve arrived.
EDITH:
Arrived?
PORTER:
Yes ma’am, in Ireland. If you’d be so kind as to disembark, I’ll
unload your trunk onto
the dockside. She looks around bewildered. 135
EDITH:
Thank you. She feels the lump on the back of her head.
PORTER:
No trouble at all. All in a days work. Ah Dublin in the rare oul’ days. (He exits singing), “take me up to Monto”.
EDITH:
Dear Mrs. McBride, I am writing to you from the dockside in Kingstown, Ireland. I have no idea how I came to be here, indeed I have little recollection of anything except your name and address perhaps you could send me a postcard reminding me who I am. Yours...? ... Eric? She scans horizon - Maverick and Kelly enter.
KELLY:
Is she safe Maverick?
MAVERICK:
Yes she’s safe and the Vicar of Marmsey is behind bars where he belongs! The only thing is Sean, it got kinda rough in the churchyard and I had to knock her out.
KELLY:
Jesus, Mary and Joseph, you’re not bloody bounty-hunting now. She’s my daughter not some desperado!
MAVERICK:
I know Sean, I’m sorry. It was the only way. You didn’t tell me she was so... so...
KELLY:
So what? She’s a lady Maverick, and don’t you forget it! A lady like her mother.... (sings) Oh Caitlin was the sweetest girl, as sweet as any lark....
MAVERICK:
Sean!
KELLY:
Sorry.
MAVERICK:
There’s one other thing.
KELLY:
Yes.
MAVERICK:
There’s one other thing I have to tell you.
KELLY:
Well out with it.
MAVERICK:
I’ve fallen in love.
KELLY:
With who?
MAVERICK:
With Edith.
KELLY:
You’ve what?!
MAVERICK:
I’ve fallen in love with Edith! 137
KELLY:
Mr. Maverick, as you know, I’ve great respect for you and not only because your father was from Sligo. You’re a great man for the cause with an opinion I trust, sure I’m as fond of you as I would be of my own son - but if you, so much as lay a finger on that woman, I’ll pull the very spine of your back through the arse of your trousers. Do you hear me?
MAVERICK:
But Sean I love her.
KELLY:
I don’t care, you lay a finger, one finger on her and I’ll rip the.....
EDITH:
Excuse me gentlemen. I’m sorry to disturb you but I seem to have lost my memory.
KELLY:
Jesus, what have you done to her. Edith it’s me, Sean Kelly.
EDITH:
And suddenly it all came back to me, Mrs McBride. As Master Kelly checked my head for lumps, I remembered everything! I had fainted. I had fainted dead away at my own, dear brother’s funeral and missed the ceremony.
MAVERICK:
It’s not your fault ma’am, you were overcome with grief.
KELLY:
Sure Edith, a funeral is a very emotional event.
EDITH:
Ah Master Kelly, Mr. Maverick you are too kind but what am I to do now?
KELLY:
Come child, I’ll bring you home. Edith exits, Kelly gives Maverick a warning look and they exit. FX: IRISH STING. Edith enters.
EDITH:
Wicklow, Ireland. June the 5th, 1889. Dear Mrs. McBride, I have finally managed to put pen to paper! And what strange revelations I have to tell you. I am staying with Master Kelly deep in the wilds of Wicklow and the truth of the matter is, I cannot leave! Do not think I am being held hostage Mrs. McBride for in truth the situation is quite the reverse. My dear host is sheltering myself and Mr. Maverick from the long arm of the law, along with members of the Irish Publican’s Army, a renegade brewers organisation. I will explain all; we had just arrived from the dockside and I was most anxious to telegraph to Marmsey when... She exits. FX: IRISH STING 139
Kelly enters followed by Edith and Maverick KELLY:
You cannot telegraph anyone Edith!
EDITH:
But why not Master Kelly? I must explain to my servants that I have found my way to Ireland by mistake. I do not blame Mr. Maverick for putting us on the wrong boat - he is after all foreign - and it was a lucky coincidence indeed that lead us to meet you, of all people, on the dockside but Dorcas and Loxley will be frantic and I must put their minds at rest!
KELLY:
Edith. Sit down and listen to me. Your coming here wasn’t exactly a mistake.
MAVERICK:
And I am not foreign – I’m an American!
EDITH:
Then to my amazement Esme, Master Kelly explained that we had been in the snare of a criminal mastermind - namely the vicar of Marmsey.
MAVERICK:
And that’s how you ended up here Miss Edith.
EDITH:
I can hardly believe it Master Kelly!
KELLY:
It’s all true Edith - he was using Sebastian’s coffin to smuggle... er... contraband.
EDITH:
Contraband! Is contraband illegal? Oh poor Sebastian.
KELLY:
It’s poor Edith I’m worried about. The police think you were an accomplice. They want to put you in prison Edith, and Marmsey is the first place they’ll look. I’m afraid you’re stuck here.
EDITH:
(She thinks) Then I am an outlaw Master Kelly?
KELLY:
I’m afraid so.
EDITH:
And is Mr. Maverick an outlaw too?
MAVERICK:
Yes ma’am.
EDITH:
What fun, we shall be outlaws together! Perhaps you would be so kind Mr. Maverick to show me to my room.
MAVERICK:
Yes ma’am. He offers her his arm.
KELLY:
Maverick!
MAVERICK:
I’ll be back directly sir. 141
They exit. EDITH:
(Exiting) Outlaws, how exciting!
KELLY:
Ah she is a chip off the old Kelly block! (Exits singing) Oh Edith is the sweetest girl, as sweet as any lark.... FX: LONGER IRISH STING. Edith enters heavily pregnant.
EDITH:
Wicklow, Ireland October 29th, 1889. Dear Esme, You will be amused to hear that your beanpole of a friend has become quite stout! It was a great cause of consternation to me at first as I seem to get fatter by the week, but Mrs. Markievics has told me that swelling such as mine is very common in Ireland, and afflicts Irish women over and over again! She starts to get sick and rushes off. Kelly and Maverick rush on.
KELLY:
(Livid) You’ll have to marry her!
MAVERICK:
Sean let me explain.
KELLY:
Are you trying to weasel out of it?
MAVERICK:
No! I want to marry her. But let me explain what happened - it’s not how it seems.
KELLY:
Oh so that’s just a cushion under her dress is it?!
MAVERICK:
It was when we were in Holland. Times were desperate. It was cold. We’d been drinking. She put my hand on her breast. Kelly chases him off. I swear it Sean. Sean! Edith enters dabbing her mouth with a hankie.
EDITH:
Do you know Mrs McBride being an outlaw is altogether quite pleasant. I do a spot of gardening in the morning, a little baking after lunch and in the evenings I have been attempting to teach Mr. Maverick how to shank my mole. This evening, however, will be quite different as Master Kelly has arranged for us to change out names. I believe this is to throw our pursuers off the scent once again. I am to become Edith O’ Shaughnessy and Mr. Maverick will be called Yankee O’Shaughnessy. Our ‘safehouse’ is to be the little gazebo at the end of the garden, which Mr. Kelly has kindly given us for a peppercorn rent. This is very sweet of him but I think we should insist on paying with money. 143
But what of Marmsey you ask? Well the one joyous piece of news I have managed to glean is that Dorcas and Loxley are to be married. As a fugitive and desperado I have renounced all rights to my little house and so have given it to them as a wedding present. But now it is with heavy heart dear Esme, that I must tell you our correspondence must cease. You have put yourself at great risk on my behalf, and your sterling reputation would be tarnished indeed by association with a wanted criminal. Therefore let us write no more but hold each other fondly in our hearts for all time. Do not worry about me, dear friend, I am quite content, and once my swelling goes down, as the countess is certain it will, I will be happy, healthy and whole again for the first time since childhood, in Marmsey, with you. God bless you Mrs. McBride, your friend, Edith O’Shaughnessy. FX: WEDDING MARCH. Kelly walks Edith up the aisle. EDITH:
(As if to priest) I beg your pardon? Oh indeed, I do! Kelly throws rice. Lights fade quickly as V/O comes in. Edith removes her ‘apron’, bundling it up
in her arms reverse side out. The two men either side of her. HISTORIAN V/O: And this is where the letters sadly stop. We know Mrs. Esme McBride even under police interrogation, never revealed Edith’s whereabouts and continued for many years as a governess before retiring home to Edinburgh. But of Edith there is no further word, except, that is, for one brief communication dated a few months later. Kelly and Maverick stand either side of her. EDITH:
Telegram: February the fourteenth, 1890. Dear Mrs. McBride. stop. Miracle has occurred. stop. Delivered of a baby girl last Tuesday. stop. One never thinks Second Coming will happen to one. stop. Have named child Jesus Edith Esme Christ. stop. Send bootees. stop. Edith. The End
145
Family Planning
Family Planning was originally commissioned by Macra na Feirme, Ireland and is published in their publication Intermission Impossible 2. The play was developed through a workshop process with Redcross Macra in County Wicklow. This group were the first to produce the play, and they went on to win Best Comedy at the Bray One Act Festival. The play has been performed by various groups around Ireland ever since. The running time is just over an hour with roles for four women and three men of varying ages. The play is a family-based, comedy drama set in small-town Ireland. The action takes place on Valentine’s Day as the O’Brien family
prepare
to
celebrate
Jim
and
Ginger’s
wedding
anniversary. The style is broad comedy and although it is naturalistic, all the characters are slightly larger than life.
147
Characters Jim O’Brien (fifties) Local councillor and publican. A recently remarried widower with three grown-up daughters. Ginger (late thirties/early forties) Jim’s second wife. Ginger is an elegant, well-groomed woman who has a pleasant and amiable personality. When challenged she can demonstrate a surprising strength of character. Barbara (late twenties/early thirties) The eldest of the O’Brien sisters, Barbara works as a midwife. She still lives at home and her natural good humour has been eclipsed by her negative feelings about her dad’s remarriage. Mary (mid-late twenties) The second O’Brien sister, Mary works as a Garda and lives nearby. She can be pedantic but apart from that is a happy, open person. Sarah (early-mid twenties) The youngest and most adventurous of the sisters, Sarah has just returned from three years traveling abroad. Harry ‘Lucky’ Doyle (forties/fifties) A builder working on the renovations of Jim’s pub. A family man with a heart of gold and a fondness for his pint. Ger McCarthy (mid-late twenties) Works for Lucky. Ger is a cocky, jack-the-lad, who sees himself as the local Casanova. He is a decent enough guy but thinks he is immune to falling in love.
Family Planning Scene One The back bar of Councilor Jim O’Brien’s pub, which is in the process of being renovated. It is early morning on Valentine’s Day. Barbara, in her nurse’s uniform, is making tea. She is not in a good mood, and bangs the mugs and kettle around as she works. She lights up a cigarette. BARB:
Bloody bitch! Mary enters from the street door, wearing her Garda uniform. (She has just finished her nightshift and has popped in for a cup of tea.)
MARY:
Morning Barbara. Barbara gives her a dirty look.
MARY:
Any tea in the pot? Barbara pours herself the last drop.
MARY:
You do know it’s an offence to smoke in licensed premises Barbara deliberately blows smoke towards Mary. 149
BARB:
Do you have something to say to me?
MARY:
Mm? Happy Valentine’s Day?
BARB:
(Flaring.) You bitch! How could you?
MARY:
You were over the limit.
BARB:
Only just.
MARY:
That’s not the point!
BARB:
I only had a bloody lager shandy.
MARY
Well then if you weighed more, you’d have been alright.
BARB:
Oh, so if I was as fat as you, you wouldn’t have charged me, is that what you’re saying?
MARY:
There’s no need to be abusive Barbara, the law’s the law. Just because you’re a nurse doesn’t mean you can flout it.
BARB:
You’re my sister for chrissakes!
MARY:
Look I’ve had a long night. I don’t want to argue about it!
BARB:
Well I do!
MARY:
I don’t know what’s got into you these days; you’re like a bear with a sore head - all the time. Barbara looks away, sullen. Why did you drive over to Mulligans anyway, you could have had a pint here?
BARB:
Because I needed to get out of the house!
MARY:
Oh not this again.
BARB:
It’s alright for you, you don’t have to live with her. She’s not here five minutes and the whole place is being turned upside down; ‘Oh Ginger thinks this’, and ‘Ginger has great idea for that’. It makes me sick. It’s my home too.
MARY:
Barbara! Dad’s wanted to refurbish the pub for ages and anyway Ginger has had a lot of good ideas. I don’t know why you don’t like her; she’s always lovely to you.
151
BARB:
Yeah well there’s things I could tell you about Ginger.
MARY:
(Exasperated) Barbara, nobody’s perfect. Why don’t you move out? If I’ve asked you once I’ve asked you a hundred times - come and share with us.
BARB:
A houseful of gardai?! You’d arrest me for indecent exposure every time I got out of the bath.
MARY:
You’re just being stubborn. Nuala and Jean both think you’re great - you’d love it.
BARB:
Why would I want to move in with you?! You just made me lose my license over a pint of lager shandy!
MARY:
The law’s the law... Anyway it’ll only end up being a year.
BARB:
Only a year!? I’m a midwife Mary! I have to visit pregnant women. I have to visit them all over the county carrying forty pounds of equipment with me. How am I going to get around?
MARY:
Dad’s got an old bike out the back somewhere.
BARB:
(Lunging at her hair) I’m going to kill you.
MARY:
(Screaming) Get off! Ow! Ger enters with a bunch of red, heartshaped, helium-filled balloons. The girls abort their scrap swiftly and try to appear as if nothing was going on.
GER:
Is everything alright?
BARB:
Fine.
MARY:
Yeah.
GER:
What were you doing?
BARB:
Hair.
GER:
What?
MARY:
Barbara was doing my hair... for the party tonight.
GER:
Oh right. Yeah, it suits you. I’m really looking forward to this party. Now lovely ladies here 153
are the balloons your dad wanted. Is he up yet? BARB:
On his anniversary!? No, he’s upstairs celebrating one year of marital bliss. She thrusts her pelvis in and out suggestively.
MARY:
Barbara!
GER:
No better man! With, I must say, no better daughters. It’s like walking to one of my fantasies; a Ban-garda, a nurse and a bar-full of liquor. (He leans towards her) Do I get a Valentines kiss Mary?
MARY:
(Seductively) Ger McCarthy if you ever get that close to me again, do you know what I’ll be forced to do?
GER:
No what?
MARY:
(Changing tone abruptly) Rip your arm off and hit you with the soggy end!
BARB:
Or breathalise you! Mary gives Barbara a dirty look.
MARY:
Anyway aren’t you supposed to be at the airport?
GER:
Patience, my little flower of the constabulary. I am on my way this very moment to pick up your darling sister, the missing jewel in the O’Brien crown, and restore her to your side.
BARB:
Well bugger off then.
GER:
I need some petrol money.
BARB:
I’ll get it.
MARY:
No! I’ll get it. (Barbara gives Mary a dirty look. To Ger) How much do you need?
GER:
Thirty.
MARY:
How much!?
GER:
Call it ten. It’ll be good to see Sarah again after all this time.
MARY:
You know she’s changed her name don’t you?
GER:
What? 155
MARY:
For her new job; presenting on the Irish radio station.
GER:
What’s she changed it to?
BARB:
Sorcha. Sorcha Ni Bhriain - can you believe it?
GER:
Mm, yeah, it suits her, Sorcha. It’s quite sexy.
BARB:
You’re not going to try and get off with Sarah are you?
GER:
Ah no. Sarah and me are friends.
BARB:
Why would that stop you?
GER:
Because there’s women and there’s friends and the two don’t mix - otherwise I might go for the record.
BARB:
What record?
GER:
You know; a full house, the holy trinity - all three Sisters O’Brien! Barbara and Mary react with outrage to his scurrilous suggestion.
BARB:
I wouldn’t touch you with somebody else’s!
MARY:
Barbara!
BARB:
And neither would the Virgin Mary here.
MARY:
I’m going to work! Here’s the petrol money. (Sarcastically to Barbara) Need a lift? Mary exits.
GER:
(Pursuing her to the door) Oh don’t leave me Mary I find you so arresting (Returning to Barbara). Bar-bara that uniform is giving me a temperature!
BARB:
Knock it off Ger. (Getting up) You better go and pick up the born again gaelgor, we don’t want her fatted calf to go cold!
GER:
You’re nothing but a tease. You know your heart’s bursting for me. Barbara bursts one of the balloons with her cigarette.
BARB:
Oh yeah. (As in; ‘you’re right’) 157
GER:
Ah Barbara don’t! Your dad’ll kill me.
BARB:
Bye Ger! She holds her cigarette close to a second balloon.
GER:
Alright, alright I’m going. Ger exits hurriedly. Barbara is about to burst the balloon, when she changes her mind. She checks whether anyone’s around then pushes the balloon inside her top and walks around imagining what it would be like to be pregnant. Just then Ginger enters unnoticed in her dressing gown. She watches Barbara and smiles to herself.
Scene Two GINGER:
It suits you.
BARB:
(Surprised, then annoyed - pulling the balloon out). Jesus, you don’t get a minute to yourself around here!
GINGER:
Sorry Barbara - I didn’t mean to creep up on you. Did I hear Mary come in this morning?
BARB:
She’s gone home.
GINGER:
Oh I see. (There’s an awkward pause while Barbara puts her coat on). And you’re off to work are you?
BARB:
(Sarcastically, indicating her nurses uniform) No I’m a kissagram!
GINGER:
Right. Well, we’ll see you later at the party I expect.
BARB:
I expect so. (She goes to leave).
GINGER:
It should be a bit of craic - I’m really looking forward to it. Barbara turns and looks Ginger up and down, then;
BARB:
Yeah, it must be a long time since you’ve, ‘entertained’. Jim enters - also in his dressing gown.
JIM:
There you are! Come back to bed you saucy little rascal! (suddenly). Oh hello Barbara I didn’t notice you there. Off to work are you?
BARB:
(Exasperated) Yes I am! 159
JIM:
What’s wrong with you? Did you not get any Valentines?
GINGER:
Ah leave her alone Jim, the post hasn’t come yet.
JIM:
You’re not arguing with your sister again are you? Barbara doesn’t answer. Listen, I don’t want any bickering on our special day. You can do what you like tomorrow but today we’re going to be one big happy family - understood?!
BARB:
Well you should tell Mary - she’s the one who started it! Barbara exits slamming the door.
JIM:
What’s got into her at all she never stops moaning - she’s a mouth like a torn pocket.
GINGER:
You should have heard her just now. It’s not getting any easier Jim - she just doesn’t like me.
JIM:
Well that’s her look out. I like you! (snuggling up to her) In fact I really like you.
GINGER:
Just ‘like’ is it Jim?
JIM:
Ah, come on you know what I mean.
GINGER:
Do I?
JIM:
Ah Ginger.
GINGER:
No go on - what do you mean?
JIM:
Alright. (Bashfully) I love you Ginger.
GINGER:
Ah Jim. I love you too.
JIM:
(He takes a small box from his pocket) Here, I got you this.
GINGER:
What is it?
JIM:
It’s a special Valentines-cum-anniversary present.
GINGER:
(Holding up a necklace.) Oh Jim, it’s beautiful. It must have cost a fortune.
161
JIM:
‘Money no object’. (Putting it on her). Happy anniversary Mrs. O’Brien.
GINGER:
Happy anniversary Mr. O’Brien. They kiss. Ginger remembers something. What time is Sarah arriving?
JIM:
I don’t know, (trying to kiss her some more) later on.
GINGER:
Jim, I’m a bit nervous about meeting her like this.
JIM:
Ah love why?
GINGER:
Think about it. She’s been away for three years and in the meantime her dad’s married a woman she’s never even heard of let alone met and now she’s arriving back, straight into their grand, first anniversary bash, probably with severe jet lag, to which you’ve invited practically every politician you could get your hands on. I thought this was supposed to be an intimate family gathering!
JIM:
Ah Ginger, don’t be getting all het up.
GINGER:
And then there’s the other thing - you’re not going to announce that at the party are you?
JIM:
(Soothingly) Of course I’m not - we’ll just tell the girls later... before the party. Now, there’s no need to get upset.
GINGER:
You’re right - I’m just a bit tense that’s all.
JIM:
Well then I think we should definitely go back to bed and take care of that tension.
GINGER:
Mr. O’Brien, you’re incorrigible.
JIM:
No Mrs. O’Brien, I’m insatiable! They exit back upstairs giggling.
Scene Three The outro music of a morning radio show is heard and a slight brightening of the lights indicates time passing. It is now late morning. Harry ‘Lucky’ Doyle enters and begins to tap the walls with the air of a master builder, until at one point some lumps of plaster fall down. He looks both ways, scoops the plaster in to his pocket and whistling, helps himself to a drink from behind the bar. (Or some other business to 163
cover Jim’s change). Jim enters, (fully dressed). JIM:
I see you’ve made yourself at home.
LUCKY:
We don’t want it to go off.
JIM:
(Furtively) Are you right Lucky. Have a seat there. Now that matter we discussed yesterday, can we finally shake on it?
LUCKY:
Hold on a minute Jim, there’s a little something that’s hitherto been omitted from our negotiations. Before we shake on anything, I want to know what sizeable chunk of cash you’re offering me. Ginger has wonderful taste Jim, but dado rails don’t come cheap and then there’s the other thing. This isn’t just a refurbishment is it? This is... added exterior walls!
JIM:
Ssh! Jaysus Lucky, keep your voice down.
LUCKY:
Do I take it the planning permission is still ‘under consideration’?
JIM:
It’s all in hand Lucky, all in hand. I mean what’s the point of being a councilor if you can’t bring joy to the faces of the children,
serve the people every day and shove a forty foot extension through planning disguised as a conservatory. LUCKY:
Ah but that’s the very point. It’s building Jim, but not as we know it! The whole mission must be shrouded in secrecy d’ya see. Myself and my highly trained workforce will be living in the shadow of fear and detection. Constantly struggling with our conscience to win the long battle against bureaucracy.
JIM:
And that costs more I take it?
LUCKY:
What are you offering?
JIM:
Fifteen grand including materials.
LUCKY:
(Indignant) Fifteen grand! Including materials! Who do you take me for?
JIM:
A man with five kids and another one on the way.
LUCKY:
Twenty - excluding materials!
JIM:
Ah now Lucky - It’ll all be cash in hand - what are your overheads? 165
LUCKY:
What about me highly trained workforce?
JIM:
Ger McCarthy! Highly trained in dipping his wick more like. Seventeen and we go halves on the bricks.
LUCKY:
Eighteen and I erase the words ‘planning permission’ from me vocabulary. Suddenly Mary enters.
MARY:
(Cheerfully) He-llo.
LUCKY:
(Under his breath to Jim) Working in the shadow of fear and detection!
MARY:
What are you two plotting?
JIM:
Lucky was just wishing me a happy anniversary. Anyway I’ll see you later Lucky.
LUCKY:
But what about me money?!
JIM:
Come back in a minute - I’ll get rid of her. Lucky just manages to knock back his drink as Jim takes the glass off him and hurries him out.
JIM:
Ah Mary what are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be resting up for the party?
MARY:
Did I hear you two talking about planning permission?
JIM:
Planning permission? Sure why would we be talking about that? I’m only giving the place a bit of a face-lift - you don’t need permission for that.
MARY:
Dad! You’re hiding something, I can always tell.
JIM:
(Sternly) Mary - I saw Barbara this morning.
MARY:
Oh.
JIM:
What’s going on?
MARY:
(Defensively) Look dad, it was her own fault, she was over the limit.
JIM:
(Realization dawning) You’re not telling me you breathalised your own sister?!
MARY:
She’s a menace to society dad!
JIM:
She’s a nurse Barbara - It balances out. 167
MARY:
I was just doing my duty. You’re the one who taught us that; ‘Do your duty and serve the people’ that’s what you always say!
JIM:
There’s duty Mary and then there’s going to far. How would you like it if you went into hospital with a cold and Barbara amputated your leg! Hm?
MARY:
Oh don’t be ridiculous dad, it’s not the same thing and anyway Barbara’s a midwife, she doesn’t do amputations!
JIM:
Police harassment Mary. You want to watch out for it! You have a glowing career ahead of you, according to the superintendent, and you don’t want to ruin it.
MARY:
Dad! You haven’t been talking to the super again, have you?!
JIM:
(Changing the subject again) Well Sarah will be home soon, I better go and get the spare room ready. Jim exits hurriedly followed by Mary.
MARY:
Dad! I told you not to interfere. (From offstage) Dad! Come back here. Lucky pops his head round the door, checks the coast is clear and pours himself another drink. Jim rushes on looking behind him.
JIM:
I think I’ve lost her. Where were we?
LUCKY:
Eighteen hundred.
JIM:
Fifteen.
LUCKY:
Seventeen.
JIM:
Fifteen.
LUCKY:
Sixteen.
JIM:
Fifteen and a half, the bricks and all the sandwiches you can eat!
LUCKY:
Done! They spit and shake on it.
JIM:
Now I’m off before Sherlock Holmes finds me. 169
MARY:
(Offstage) Dad! They both jump up.
JIM:
(Exiting) No you stay here or it’ll look suspicious.
LUCKY:
(Moving towards the bar for another drink) My pleasure. Mary enters and startles Lucky.
MARY:
Where’s dad?
LUCKY:
He had some business down the town. I’m minding the shop.
MARY:
Drinking the shop more like!
LUCKY:
A good salesman knows his wares! Anyway when’s Sarah due back?
MARY:
Sarah? Oh you mean Sorcha - in a couple of hours I think.
LUCKY:
Sorcha?
MARY:
Yes, she’s gone all Irish on us!
Mary exits. LUCKY:
In Australia?
Scene Four Airport. Ger enters downstage. He is waiting for Sarah. TANOY:
(Nasal female voice) Would Passenger Sarah O’Brien, sorry, passenger Sorcha Ni Bhriain recently arrived on flight E101 from Sydney, please make her way to the meeting point. Thankyou.
GER:
(Waiting) Sorcha Ni Bhriain! She won’t know whose come to pick her up when she hears that. I should hide as well and jump out at her when she goes past. He takes out a pair of sunglasses and tries to blend into the background.
VOICE:
Would Sarah O’Brien, ah feck it. Would Sorcha Ni Bhriain please make her way to the meeting point. Thank you. 171
Sarah enters looking for Ger. She is wearing shorts and is very tanned with a rucksack on her back. He doesn’t recognise her. He is completely bowled over for the whole scene. SARAH:
Ger. Ger it’s me.
GER:
(Amazed by her transformation) Sarah?
SARAH:
Yeah! Is it very bright outside?
GER:
What? Oh these. (He takes off sunglasses) No it’s just my eyes are very sensitive to... er... airports. You look amazing! You’ve really changed.
SARAH:
Well you haven’t Ger McCarthy. Don’t give me any of your old lines. I suppose it was you who got them to announce my name in Irish?
GER:
(Still gobsmacked) Oh that, yeah - for a bit of a wind up. You really do look amazing. Your travels must have agreed with you.
SARAH:
They did... You never wrote!
GER:
Ah, I hate writing. You only wrote twice!
SARAH:
Well I never got a reply. Ger you don’t know how good it is to see you, c’mere give us a hug. They hug. That’s funny.
GER:
What is?
SARAH:
You won’t laugh?
GER:
No.
SARAH:
I just remembered I used to have the biggest crush on you.
GER:
(Hopeful) You did?
SARAH:
God, I probably had a crush on you since I was six. Isn’t that mad? (Playful/teasing) But of course, you were too busy steaming up the inside of your dad’s tractor...
GER:
Sarah!
SARAH:
...to notice my poor little heart sitting on my sleeve. 173
GER:
Sarah...I didn’t know... if I had…
SARAH:
I’m only messing. Don’t tell me you’ve got all sensitive in your old age. (Pause) So what are you up to these days?
GER:
Ah, same old, same old - you know yourself.
SARAH:
Still working for Lucky?
GER:
Yeah - it’s a living.
SARAH:
Listen, thanks for coming to pick me up, it must be a madhouse at home.
GER:
Here, give us your rucksack.
SARAH:
Ger McCarthy?! A gentleman?!
GER:
Indeed my lady and your carriage awaits. Jesus what have you got in here?
SARAH:
Presents mostly - I got a didgerydoo for dad.
GER:
Well that’s one thing I’d love to see - Jim O’Brien above in Grafton Street - playing the didgerydoo. So do you think you’ll stay long?
SARAH:
Yeah. I’ve made a decision - I’m home for good. I mean don’t get me wrong, I had a brilliant time traveling; I’ve seen some amazing places, and met the most amazing people but now, well, I need to settle down. (He is staring at her). What?
GER:
You know, you have a sort of glow about you.
SARAH:
Come on Prince Charming. Get your carriage in gear - remember I’ve got a step-mother to meet.
Scene Five Lights fade back up in the pub. Lucky is reading the paper. Jim and Ginger enter through the outside door with shopping bags. LUCKY:
Happy anniversary to you Mrs. O’Brien - did you buy the town?!
GINGER:
Oh this - this isn’t half of it Lucky, the caterer’s bringing the rest later.
LUCKY:
I’d say that’ll cost you a pretty penny Jim.
175
GINGER:
‘Money no object’ Lucky. (Romantically to Jim) He’s the most generous man in the world. Lucky gives Jim a look.
LUCKY:
‘Money no object’?
JIM:
A figure of speech Lucky. Could you ever hang on here a bit longer?
GINGER:
There’s still a lot to do.
JIM:
(To Ginger with a glint in his eye) Upstairs! They exit.
LUCKY:
‘Money no object’! It is if you’re building his shagging extension! Ger arrives in with Sarah.
SARAH:
Lucky!
LUCKY:
Well he-llo Miss Fancypants! (They hug) Are you not cold?!
SARAH:
It was seventy five in the shade when I left Sydney.
LUCKY:
Holy Jesus! What sort of unchristian weather is that for February?!
SARAH:
You’d love it Lucky! Blue skies, soaring temperatures.
LUCKY:
You better go in now and change before you start temperatures soaring round here. Your dad’s inside with Ginger.
SARAH:
(Looks nervous).
LUCKY:
She’s lovely Sarah. You’ll like her.
SARAH:
Wish me luck.
LUCKY:
Good luck.
SARAH:
(To Ger) See you later. She exits.
GER:
(Calling after her) Yeah see you later at the party.
LUCKY:
Now Ger, sit down ‘til I talk to you. Ger stares after Sarah. 177
LUCKY:
Ger!
GER:
Sorry. What Lucky? (Lucky is being very covert)
LUCKY:
C’mere. Now, I’ve just had a ‘chat’ with the governor. The summit met, so to speak, and I feel the ensuing negotiated settlement will be to everyone’s mutual benefit.
GER:
(Stares at him) You’re spending too much time with Jim O’Brien, d’ya know that? You’re beginning to sound like him. (He goes to leave).
LUCKY:
Where are you going? Will you sit down ‘til I give you the Johnny McGrory.
GER:
What?
LUCKY:
The story! Ger stares at him uncomprehendingly. About the spondulicks!
GER:
What are you talking about?
LUCKY:
Jaysus Ger! (Shouts) The feckin’ refurbishment, ya feckin’ eejit!
GER:
Oh. Has he got the planning permission then?
LUCKY:
Ssh! (Looking around paranoid) Not exactly.
GER:
Well then why are you shouting about it?
LUCKY:
Jesus, Mary and Joseph I give up! Look do you want to hear about the job or not?
GER:
Yeah, course.
LUCKY:
Right...
GER:
Lucky?
LUCKY:
(Tolerantly) Yes Ger?
GER:
When you were courtin’, when exactly did you... know?
LUCKY:
Know what?
GER:
You know. ‘Know’. 179
LUCKY:
No, I don’t know, ‘know’!
GER:
When did you realise, she was the one.
LUCKY:
Jaysus Ger. I can’t remember that far back.
GER:
But was there a feeling Lucky, a sudden realisation?
LUCKY:
Well you know the old saying; ‘there’s a boot for every foot.’ I took one look at my Margaret’s face and knew I’d found me...ah well you know what I mean!
GER:
But you do love her, don’t you?
LUCKY:
Of course I love her man! I might not say it to her face, but by god, I love that woman. (Sentimentally) We’ve been through thick and thin together. Seen good times and bad. I tell you I wouldn’t swap her for all the tea in China.
GER:
Yeah but would you swap her for another woman?
LUCKY:
Another woman! Sure where would I get the energy?! Anyway, what’s this all about? Don’t tell me you’ve some young one up the pole.
GER:
No!
LUCKY:
Well I’d say that’s more luck than judgement! (Poking him) Do you not carry condoms? You’re supposed to nowadays you know.
GER:
What would you know about condoms?
LUCKY:
I’ve done my bit for the Catholic population and anyway Father Morrissey thinks you lose the urge after forty.
GER:
(Laughing uncertainly) But you don’t do you? I mean you and the wife still... don’t you?
LUCKY:
Is there anything else you’d like to know?
GER:
I don’t mean to be nosy Lucky...
LUCKY:
Yeah right!
GER:
...It’s just that I discovered something today. Something that’s never happened to me before. Something that frightened me.
LUCKY:
Jaysus man you’ve the clap?!
GER:
No! Lucky - I think... I think I’m falling in love. 181
LUCKY:
(Pause as Lucky digests this amazing information) You? Fall in love? I thought you were pathologically opposed to the condition. Who is the unfortunate girl anyway?
GER:
I can’t tell you.
LUCKY:
Oh it’s serious so. (Playing detective) Is she local?
GER:
You could say.
LUCKY:
And you’ve asked her out have you?
GER:
No, I can’t. That’s just it - she thinks of me as a friend.
LUCKY:
Oh I see; she wants to be friends but you want to get her round the back of the Esso station!
GER:
Lucky I’m serious. It’s like a bolt out of the blue. I feel queasy when I think about her, my palms sweat when she’s near me, I can’t think about anything else.
LUCKY:
Oh ho, that’s love alright and no better day to catch a dose of it. You’ve one of Cupid’s little darts stuck fast in you and I’d say it’d be very hard to shift. Especially if she keeps wearing those shorts! (He taps his nose and exits).
GER:
(Calling after him) How did you know? Lucky. (He exits - from off) Lucky wait! I need advice. This has never happened to me before.
Scene Six Early evening. The O’Brien clan are gathering for a champagne toast before the party. They enter with glasses. Barbara and Mary are still not speaking and Sarah is looking unwell. JIM:
(Raising bottle) Does everyone have champagne? Now I’d like to make a toast… Jesus what are those balloons doing still in here?
GINGER:
Jim never mind the balloons - make the toast.
JIM:
Sarah are you alright?
SARAH:
I’m just a bit jet-lagged that’s all dad. 183
JIM:
Well before I make my toast I’d just like to say a few words...
BARB:
We’ll be here all night.
JIM:
I’m delighted to have all my family back together on this special day and I’m particularly delighted to welcome home Sarah and tell her how very proud we all are of her and her new job at the radio station.
BARB:
Here we go.
JIM:
I think as a father I have a right to be very proud indeed. Three lovely daughters all working to serve the community as I myself have attempted to do in my small way as councilor and, of course, publican. Well girls after your mother died, god rest her soul, I didn’t think I could be happy again. I was content to believe I would live out my days as a widower, but then wasn’t I the luckiest man in the world when Ginger...
BARB:
(Under her breath but loud enough for Ginger to hear) ...got her claws into you.
MARY:
Ssh!
JIM:
Came into my life and I fell in love all over again. So my toast is very simple - To the O’Brien family.
ALL:
(They stand) The O’Brien family.
SARAH:
Congratulations.
GINGER:
Sarah are you sure you’re all right? You do look a bit queasy.
SARAH:
Well actually I have something I have to tell... (you all).
JIM:
Come on Ginger I think it’s time for our special announcement. (Proudly) Ginger and I... (They exchange loving glances).
GINGER:
We’re going to have a baby! General amazement.
BARB:
(Horrified) I don’t believe it!
MARY:
(Delighted) A baby!
BARB:
I can’t live with a baby.
185
GINGER:
Well you wouldn’t have to move out right away, it’s not due until August.
BARB:
The cuckoo has landed!
MARY:
A baby!
SARAH:
(Nervously) Could I just say something? It seems appropriate to mention this now and I’d have to tell you all sooner or later... actually... I’m going to have a baby as well! Pandemonium.
MARY:
(More delighted) Another baby!
JIM:
You’re going to what!?
GINGER:
Remember your blood pressure Jim.
SARAH:
I’m going to have a baby! I’m pregnant dad.
JIM:
How can you be pregnant?
BARB:
By going to bed with a big hairy Aussie....
MARY:
Shut up Barbara!
JIM:
You think you can just hop into bed and get pregnant. Who’s the father?
SARAH:
I shouldn’t have brought this up yet. Let’s leave it until tomorrow.
JIM:
When did you get married?
SARAH:
What? I didn’t.
JIM:
Well you’re not welcome in my house without a ring on your finger. You floozy!
GINGER:
Jim!
SARAH:
(Getting angry) Listen dad, I’m not marrying anyone. In fact there is no father because... I went to a sperm bank! Everyone is taken aback.
BARB:
What?!
JIM:
Holy Mary mother of Jesus... Ger enters
JIM:
A sperm bank! 187
GER:
Em... Mr. O’Brien, sorry to interrupt but the guests are arriving. Mr.Dawson from the planning office is looking for you, something about a conservatory.
JIM:
(Pretending everything’s normal) Ah right, yes. Come on then everyone - (threateningly) one great big happy family. Jim exits followed by Sarah, Mary and Ger. Barbara is about to follow when Ginger calls her back.
Scene Seven GINGER:
Barbara! Can I have a quick word?
BARB:
What?
GINGER:
There’s something I want to say to you.
BARB:
(Sarcastic.) Pack your bags you’re leaving! You already said it.
GINGER:
I didn’t mean it to sound like that.
BARB:
This is what you wanted all along isn’t it? To force me out of my home!
GINGER:
Barbara what exactly is your problem? Is it that your father married again? Is it me personally? Or is it that you took on the mammy role as a kid and now you won’t let it go?
BARB:
You can’t talk to me like that.
GINGER:
(Sympathetic) I know it was tough after your mum died, Jim’s told me about it. You were the oldest, it hit you hardest. You did have a hard time - but you’re not the only one in the world who’s had it rough.
BARB:
(Sarcastic) Oh here it comes the tragic story.
GINGER:
Barbara I know what it feels like. I lost my mother when I was a girl...
BARB:
That’s no excuse!
GINGER:
(Taken by surprise) Excuse for what? For marrying your father?
BARB:
You know what I’m talking about.
GINGER:
No I don’t. What are you trying to say Barbara? 189
BARB:
I know all about you.
GINGER:
What do you mean?
BARB:
I’ve been listening in to you on the phone.
GINGER:
You’ve been what?!
BARB:
When you were talking to your old ‘friends’, you know, from the ‘escort agency’.
GINGER:
You’ve been listening to my phone conversations?! (Pause) Alright then - and what did you find out?
BARB:
Well, that you used to work there... in the escort agency
GINGER:
Yes?
BARB:
(Uncertainly) So I know.
GINGER:
You know what?
BARB:
Do you really want me to spell it out?
GINGER:
Yes I do Barbara, let’s get this out in the open once and for all.
BARB:
Alright then. I know that you worked as a... as a... call girl! Pause.
GINGER:
Well ‘escort’ is the term I would use but yes, you’re right, your snooping paid off, I did work for an agency. So?
BARB:
What do you mean, ‘so’? I could tell dad everything.
GINGER:
You could but I don’t think he’d be surprised how do you think I met him in the first place?!
BARB:
What?!
GINGER:
Yes Barbara. Jim O’Brien was the best client I ever had - remember all those business trips to Dublin? So if you want to fuel gossip with your sarcastic little remarks - go ahead, but remember you won’t just be hurting me. I know you think I’m a gold-digger but I’m not! I didn’t marry your father for his money, Barbara and I certainly didn’t marry him to become your evil stepmother - I married him because he was decent to me and I fell in love! You can believe it or not I don’t care any more. I’ve been trying to make friends 191
with you for the best part of a year and you’ve just thrown it all back in my face and I’m sorry, but I’ve had enough. If you don’t want to accept me that’s fine - all I’m saying is; the gloves are off and, believe me Barbara, I can be as much of a bitch as you can! Right, I think we should join the others before we’re missed. ‘One big happy family’ remember?! Ginger exits. There is a pause while we take in Barbara’s shocked expression. She then gathers her thoughts and exits. Scene Eight ‘Ay, ay, ay, ay Conga’ is heard off - the party is now in full swing offstage. Lucky slips in and helps himself to a pint. Sarah enters looking exhausted, she suddenly notices Lucky. SARAH:
Are you looking for sanctuary too?
LUCKY:
No, the free bar’s finished in the other room. Sarah starts to cry.
LUCKY:
Oh Sarah love, whatever’s the matter? You look done in.
SARAH:
Sorry Lucky, it’s just tiredness.
LUCKY:
Well come on, sit down. Can I get you anything?
SARAH:
Just a hankie, if you have one. As Lucky pulls out a rather stringy piece of loo roll, the plaster he scooped into his pocket earlier falls out - Sarah doesn’t notice. He shakes the dust out of the loo roll and hands it to her.
LUCKY:
It is clean. It’s been through the wash in these trousers.
SARAH:
Oh Lucky, I’m so confused.
LUCKY:
Ah well that’ll be the time difference. Things’ll be better tomorrow.
SARAH:
Will they? I wonder. (Pause). Lucky, what’s it like having children?
LUCKY:
A drain on the purse and a pain in the bollocks! People are asking me the strangest questions today. 193
SARAH:
But they are... lovely as well. Aren’t they?
LUCKY:
All children’s lovely. It’s what they get dealt when they come out that makes ‘em or breaks ‘em.
SARAH:
Do you think I’d make a good mother?
LUCKY:
Sarah, I think you’d be good at whatever you did. Now is there something you’re not telling me?
SARAH:
I’m going to have a baby Lucky.
LUCKY:
Ah love. Congratulations.
SARAH:
It’s just that... well... I’m doing it on my own.
LUCKY:
Oh. And are you happy about that?
SARAH:
Yes. Well not exactly. Oh I don’t know! I just blurted it out to the family before the party. Dad went mental and said I had to marry the father and I over-reacted and told him I’d been to a sperm bank.
LUCKY:
A sperm bank! Well I suppose that’s one way of looking at the fella.
SARAH:
Oh Lucky it wasn’t like that. It just wouldn’t have worked out.
LUCKY:
I was only joking. Ah, you’re dad’ll come round. His bark’s worse than his bite.
SARAH:
I don’t know... I was thinking maybe it’s selfish to bring a child into the world without having planned it properly, maybe I shouldn’t...
LUCKY:
Sarah. Did I ever tell you how I came to be called ‘Lucky’?
SARAH:
No... but what’s that got to do...?
LUCKY:
We’d been married about three years at the time and Margaret was mad keen to start a family, but I wasn’t sure and I kept putting her off; ‘we’ll wait a bit longer’, I’d say, ‘til there’s more money in the bank’. I was working for a man called Milo Rafferty at the time, you might have heard of him. Sarah shakes her head. He’d taken me on as an apprentice and taught me everything he knew. The man was practically a father to me, Sarah. Anyway, one Saturday we went out to a house to do 195
some rewiring. It was a straightforward enough job but, we were talking about football - a great passion of Milo’s, and we’d forgotten to switch the electricity off. SARAH:
Oh no.
LUCKY:
It’s worse than that. Milo turned to me, exposed wires in the one hand, metal pliers in the other, to wax lyrical once again about the silky skills of the great Georgie Best, when all of a sudden, didn’t he bring his two hands together and explode in a great fountain of blue sparks.
SARAH:
Dead?
LUCKY:
Dead! Electrocuted to death. I ran over and grabbed him - I just wasn’t thinking. If it hadn’t been for the wellies the wife made me wear on the bike, there’d have been two blue fountains.
SARAH:
And that’s why you’re called Lucky.
LUCKY:
After I got over the shock, if you’ll pardon the pun, I stopped my dithering and I says to the wife; ‘lets make babies!’. Life is too precious to be worrying about the consequences all
the time Sarah - you have to get out there and live it! SARAH:
You’re right Lucky. Gradual fade up “It’s Not Unusual To Be Loved...” (Tom Jones).
LUCKY:
And you never know the right man might come along sooner than you think. Non-verbal party noise from off - people enjoying themselves. Now will you have a dance Sarah? (Looking offstage) From what I can see, you’re the only O’Brien not on the floor.
SARAH:
I’ll follow you out in a minute Lucky.
LUCKY:
Ah, take your time Sarah - you’ve had a long day. Lucky exits. Music swells and gradually fades out as.
Scene Nine 197
Sarah gets up to look at the balloons. Ginger enters. Their conversation is initially awkward and stilted. GINGER:
Hi... I wondered if you were alright?
SARAH:
Oh thanks, no I’m fine. (Pause) Congratulations... on the... (baby).
GINGER:
Thanks... You too.
SARAH:
Oh thanks. They smile at each other. There is a pause where they both visibly relax. Sarah confides.
SARAH:
It wasn’t really a sperm bank.
GINGER:
I didn’t think so.
SARAH:
He was an American… traveling like me. We hooked up for a while; spent a few nights of romantic bliss together and then went our separate ways.
GINGER:
It wasn’t planned then?
SARAH:
No. By the time I realised I was pregnant it was two months later and he was already in
my past somehow. Do you know what I mean? GINGER:
I think so. And you decided to keep the baby?
SARAH:
Yes. Once I got over the shock I realised I wanted it.
GINGER:
And will you tell the father now you’ve decided?
SARAH:
Well I thought I’d send him tapes of the show.
GINGER:
The show?
SARAH:
You know for the Irish radio station. I’m going to do a series following my own pregnancy on air.
GINGER:
I was wondering but now I’m convinced you’re definitely an O’Brien!
SARAH:
It’s going to be a sort of, as Gaeilge Marion Finucane on oestragen! From offstage.
JIM:
Ginger! Ginger come and meet Mr. Dawson. 199
GINGER:
Duty calls! I don’t suppose you want to come and plamas the planning officer do you?
SARAH:
No thanks. Ginger goes to exit.
SARAH:
Ginger. Are you looking forward to it... the baby?
GINGER:
Oh yes. I never thought I’d fall in love and get married and have a baby. I thought I’d missed the boat and now here I am on the QE2!
JIM:
(Offstage) Ginger!
GINGER:
See you later. She exits.
Scene Ten DJ:
(Offstage) Now we’re going to slow it right down and specially for Valentine’s Day, here’s Whitney Houston with; “I Will Always Love You”. Sarah smiles to herself and sits down. Ger and Lucky appear in the doorway.
LUCKY:
Go on man Lucky gives Ger a little shove into the room and disappears. Ger is nervous.
GER:
Hiya Sarah.
SARAH:
Oh hi Ger. You taking a breather as well?
GER:
I’ve, em, been doing a bit of thinking.
SARAH:
Oh yeah? Me too.
GER:
Oh what have you been thinking about?
SARAH:
Oh, this and that.
GER:
Yeah, me too. Pause. Er, Lucky told me about your... news.
SARAH:
Oh... So what do you think?
GER:
Well, I think... (Suddenly blurts) Marry me!
SARAH:
What?! 201
He kneels. GER:
(Earnestly) Marry me Sarah!
SARAH:
Ger I don’t know if you know this but you just proposed to me.
GER:
Sarah I’m serious. I think I’m in love with you.
SARAH:
You think you’re in love with me?
GER:
I am in love with you. From the moment I saw you at the airport I knew. It all just clicked into place, we’re mates and now I fancy you as well. It’s perfect. And you said you used to have a crush on me too.
SARAH:
Ger, we haven’t seen each other in ages, in years. I did have a crush on you when I was sixteen, but I’m not sixteen any more.
GER:
So, what are you saying?
SARAH:
I’m saying, I’m not in love with you.
GER:
But what about the baby? I could help out, be a father for it.
SARAH:
I’m not looking for a father.
GER:
It’d solve all your problems.
SARAH:
Ger, I don’t have any problems. I’m having a baby not a nervous breakdown. Look Ger, I don’t mean to be harsh and please don’t think I’m not grateful but...
GER:
I’ve got a job, I could support you.
SARAH:
I’ve got a job, I can support myself! Ger, it’s not a reflection on you; you’re funny, you’re handsome, you’re great company you’re a great guy! It’s just that... I’m not in love with you... Sorry.
GER:
Oh god now I feel like an awful gobshite!
SARAH:
Ah come on. You don’t look like a gobshite that took a lot of guts.
GER:
Yeah, well. I think I’ll go get a drink. He goes to leave.
SARAH:
Ger. He turns back. 203
What I really need right now is friends. We are still friends aren’t we? GER:
Course we are. He comes back and gives her a hug.
SARAH:
Are you alright?
GER:
No. I still fancy the arse off you - I’m going to have to go to the gents and rearrange my trousers. He exits. Sarah smiles to herself.
SARAH:
Well, it’s nice to feel attractive. Ceili-type music fades up quickly. Whoops are heard from offstage. The party is still in full swing.
SARAH:
(Looking offstage) Oh no, I’m not able for that. She yawns and lays her head on the table for a nap. Music and voices fade up and then fade out. Lights fade down a little - time passes. Then from off we hear Barbara and Mary singing; ‘Ay ay ay ay Conga’. They
dance on stage - Mary holding onto Barbara’s hips, their shoes in their hands. They are tipsy. They see Sarah. BARB:
Ssshhh!
MARY:
Ssshhh, ssshhh. Mary attempts to wake Sarah up.
BARB:
Gently, she’s pregnant.
MARY:
Everybody’s bloody pregnant.
BARB:
Except us!
MARY:
Sarah. Sarah! It’s your two lovely sisters. Sarah wakes up.
SARAH:
Oh god, I must have nodded off. What time is it?
BARB:
Six o’clock....
MARY:
...in the morning. We’ve been awake for twenty-four hours.
205
SARAH:
God, I feel like I’ve been awake for two whole weeks.
BARB:
Now, you want to mind yourself in your condition. C’mere ‘til I check your belly.
SARAH:
Get off Barbara, you’re pissed!
MARY:
Excuse me madam, you seem to be under the influence of alcohol. I will have to ask you to walk this way. Mary starts up another chorus of ‘Ay ay ay ay Conga’ and dances across the floor Barbara joins in.
SARAH:
I take it you two are friends again.
MARY:
I am happy to announce that myself and Florence Nightingale have made up our differences.
BARB:
Yes, I can verify that. Kojak and me are the best of buddies once again. Oh Jesus I’m knackered.
MARY:
Let’s sit down.
They sit around the table with Sarah and look expectantly at her. BARB:
So!
SARAH:
What?
MARY:
Come on you dark horse. Who’s the fella?
SARAH:
What? What fella?
MARY:
Well, you didn’t think we swallowed the sperm bank did you?
BARB:
Euh - Mary!
MARY:
Sorry.
SARAH:
You’re right - there was a man, but... well, it didn’t work out.
BARB:
Ah come on tell us about him, we’re your sisters.
SARAH:
Ah not tonight.
MARY:
Why not?
SARAH:
‘Cos I’m tired. 207
MARY:
Aw, come on.
SARAH:
No I don’t want to!
MARY:
Why not?
SARAH:
Because I don’t.
BARB:
What are you hiding?
SARAH:
Nothing!
MARY:
You are. Come on, who is it?
BARB:
Yeah, who is it? We swear we won’t tell anyone.
SARAH:
I can’t.
MARY:
Please.
BARB:
Please Sarah.
SARAH:
I can’t.
BARB:
Ah you have to. You can’t leave us dangling!
SARAH:
(With a glint in her eye). Alright. But you’re sworn to secrecy, okay?
MARY/BARB:
Okay.
SARAH:
Alright I’ll tell you. It was....
MARY/BARB:
Yeah.
SARAH:
Rolf Harris! Mary looks stunned and then realises she’s joking.
MARY:
Ah Sarah. I believed you for a minute.
SARAH:
Look I’ll tell you all about it tomorrow I’m just too tired to go into it all now.
BARB:
Alright. But are you okay, you know, about it?
SARAH:
Yeah, I am. Jim enters.
JIM:
Well that’s the last of them.
MARY:
Hi dad, where’s Ginger? 209
JIM:
She’s gone up, you know, she’s got to mind herself.
MARY:
So did you have a good night?
JIM:
Ah ‘twas great apart from some of the gobshite’s you have to be nice to.
MARY:
You got your planning permission then so!
JIM:
How did you know about that?
MARY:
Like father like daughter.
JIM:
Did you tell Barbara you were dropping the charges?
BARB:
I can hear you dad - and yes she did.
JIM:
Oh right. (Awkwardly) Hello Sarah.
SARAH:
Dad.
JIM:
Listen, I was a bit harsh earlier. It was the shock. I said some things I didn’t mean and...
BARB:
Go on.
JIM:
I want to apologise.
SARAH:
Ah da, you don’t have to apologise. I shouldn’t have blurted it out like that. You had your special announcement and I ruined it.
JIM:
Ah you didn’t. Where would the O’Brien’s be without a bit of a bluster and ruckus. Anyway, the important thing now, as Ginger says, is the two new O’Briens; yours and mine.
BARB:
Yeah dad, we didn’t know you had it in you.
JIM:
Oh I always knew I had it in me. I just didn’t know it was going to come out again!
MARY:
Dad!
JIM:
Ah, I’m a lucky man! Surrounded as I am by the loveliest women in the world. Sure if I were to count all my blessings...
BARB:
Come on it’s time for bed, dad’s getting sentimental.
SARAH:
(Half asleep) Good night dad. It’s going to be great you’ll see; you’re going to be a dad and a granddad all at once!
211
Jim rolls his eyes to heaven. Mary and Sarah leave, Barbara is just behind them when Jim calls her back. JIM:
Barbara. I heard you had a little chat with Ginger.
BARB:
(Sheepish) Oh yeah?
JIM:
I just wanted to say, I’m glad you two have made friends at last.
BARB:
Made friends? Oh... yeah. Goodnight dad. She exits. Jim smiles to himself. Pause.
JIM:
Well I’m glad that day’s over - women they’re enough to drive you mad. (Looking to heaven) Dear god, just one simple request, the new babies, let them both be boys! The End
Lower Than The Heart A Love Story About Sex
213
Lower Than The Heart was originally commissioned by the Gaiety School of Acting, Dublin, as one of the showcase plays for the graduating students of the full-time acting course. It was first produced at the Project Arts Centre in 2001. The Twins love to meddle in the affairs of humans; they make a bet that true love can’t last without sex. When Andrew discovers he’s impotent, Aline believes it won’t affect their love but kisses Nick in a nightclub. Meanwhile Nick’s wife Liz is fed-up being treated like a virgin bride and hates her sexually liberated motherin-law Nina. In search of his lost machismo Andrew’s therapy sessions start morphing into Film Noire scenarios and his therapist
is
having
elaborate
fantasies
about
her
painter/decorator. Will the Twins ever get a square meal again? The play is a modern, verbally explicit comedy-drama using minimum setting and contemporary playing methods to tell four interconnected stories of love, sex and desire. The play has dedicated roles for four women and three men and there are two further roles, the Twins, which are not gender specific. The running time is approximately one hour fifteen minutes.
Characters Andrew/Mike Spanner
Thirties. A journalist, in love with Aline. A gentle, caring kind of guy. Doubles as Mike Spanner a Film Noire private eye.
Aline
Twenties/Thirties. Andrew’s girlfriend, in love with him right back. Quirky and funky.
Sam/Joe
Thirties. A straight-talking painter/decorator and object of desire.
Liz
Twenties. A shy, virginal woman with hidden passions.
Nick
Thirties. Liz’s philandering husband. Confident, direct, sexy.
Nina
Fifties. Nick’s exotic, German mother.
Andrea
Thirties. A sex-starved, sex therapist. Initially professional and up-tight.
The Twins
Twenties. Two succubae; supernatural entities that feed on sexual energy and play with mortals. Funky with attitude. Any gender.
215
Lower Than The Heart Scene One Leonard Cohen's; 'I'm You're Man' cross fades to a beach. Andrew is laying with his head in Aline's lap, reading a Raymond Chandler novel. ANDREW:
(To audience) We were on the beach. Just lazing. We'd been working hard on the house and we were taking a break. I had my head in her lap and she was messing with my hair... and it was perfect. (To Aline) Mmm. That's nice. Aline develops the hair play into monkey-style grooming. She pretends to pick out fleas and eat them.
ANDREW:
Hey what are you doing?
ALINE:
(Offering him a 'flea') You want one?
ANDREW:
Aline, I think the National Geographic channel is going to have to go.
ALINE:
Hush my jungle monkey lover. Let me groom you and prove to you my adoration by picking the fleas from your scalp.
ANDREW:
Well, seeing as you put it like that. Hiatus. Aline continues to stroke Andrew's head but tilts her face up to the sun.
ALINE:
This is perfect.
ANDREW:
(To audience) We were so much in love that nature could do nothing but reflect the feeling in the golden expanse of the beach and the glittering of the sun-warmed sea.
ALINE:
It's almost too perfect. You do still love me, don't you?
ANDREW:
Mmm... Yup I think so.
ALINE:
You think so!
She tweaks his ears. ANDREW:
Okay, okay. I love you.
ALINE:
How much?
217
ANDREW:
So much, I could explode. Hm? Then what would you do?
ALINE:
Easy, I'd pick up all the pieces and stick you together with super glue.
ANDREW:
And what if... my... tongue was missing?
ALINE:
Well that could be a blessing in disguise.
ANDREW:
Okay Miss Smarty-pants but what if you couldn't find my penis, hm?
ALINE:
Your tongue and your penis in one fell swoop?
ANDREW:
Uhuh.
ALINE:
(Thinks) It wouldn't matter because you'd still be you and it's you that I love. Beat She puts her hand on his groin.
ANDREW:
Aline!
ALINE:
Just checking. (She leans over him and they kiss) Andrew?
ANDREW:
Mm.
ALINE:
You don't think this is too perfect do you? You know like one of us is bound to die of leukemia.
ANDREW:
What?
ALINE:
Because of dramatic irony.
ANDREW:
What are you talking about?
ALINE:
I'm scared of dramatic irony; like in a film when the couple are so happy and in love that you just know one of them's going to die or turn out to be a serial killer. And then some man at the end says; "That's ironic - she loved him so much she had to kill him and suck out his brains".
ANDREW:
Oh... so that's dramatic irony.
ALINE:
Yeah - it could all just be too perfect. He puts down his book and gazes up at her.
ANDREW:
It can't be too perfect.
ALINE:
No? 219
ANDREW:
No, it's either perfect or it isn't. The 'too' in that context is an irrelevant qualification.
ALINE:
No you're an irrelevant qualification! She tries to run away, giggling, but he grabs her before she gets very far.
ALINE:
(Screaming and laughing) Get off. Get off me!
ANDREW:
I'm going to tickle you to death. Ironic enough for you!
ALINE:
Stop it. Stop it. Aaaaghhh! You… you... Monkeyheaded arse-monkey!
ANDREW:
(He breaks away with mock upset) Monkeyheaded arse monkey? Well now you really have gone too far.
ALINE:
Gibbon fucker. (Giggling madly) Big, fat baboon arse! He jumps on her and they wrestle themselves to a kiss.
ANDREW:
I love you.
ALINE:
I love you.
ANDREW:
I love you no matter what.
ALINE:
I love you no matter what.
ANDREW:
(Turning out to audience) Time had slowed right down to the lapping of the waves on the shore. We were in love and it was forever. Snap shift. Loud punky music. Enter the twins, speaking over, but in time with the music.
Scene Two TWIN 1:
Lo-ove
TWIN 2:
Oh Lo-ove
TWIN 1:
You're so bloody smug! Music stops suddenly.
TWINS:
(Hard, fast and low) We've had enough of the putting of love on a pedestal. 221
I don't think you quite understand that you can't just fuck us around. You think you're so above it the bump and grind, but you know you love it. TWIN 1:
I tell you one thing for free; they'd fucking miss it, if it wasn't there. Sorry, excuse my French.
TWIN 2:
Yeah, pardonez- moi as well. Restoration-style music. They strike a poetic pose and speak in cut-glass accents, reverting to their own accents for the last line. They clear their throats.
TWIN 1:
If music be the food of love, It is an appetizing art,
TWIN 2:
Which Cupid with his oven glove, Serves up to mask his other dart.
TWIN 1:
For once your appetite's provoked, And all your juices are a flowing,
TWIN 2:
You'll find to keep your oven stoked,
Music cuts out. TWINS:
It's lower than the heart you're going! Punky music sting. Andrea is in a spotlight talking directly to the audience, as if giving a lecture.
ANDREA:
Sex, Ladies and Gentlemen. The reason we're all here; quite literally. In this series of lectures, I hope to cover the fundamentals of sex therapy as well as touching on some of the more recent studies into sexual behaviourism. But let's start at the beginning.
TWIN 1:
In the beginning was the word.
TWIN 2:
And the word was fuck.
TWIN 1:
And we did.
TWIN 2:
And it was good.
ANDREA:
(Out) Procreation, Intimacy, Pleasure, not necessarily in that order, the primary reasons we seek sexual contact? Cut to Sam. 223
SAM:
(To audience) I don't know, I think it was about control. I mean I was fucking furious. I wasn't sad or upset. I was fucking furious. I think I thought I owned her. I mean she'd gone, she'd already left me but when I found out she was seeing one of the other interns, it was like... yeah, it was like someone had broken into my house and shit in my bed! It was like; 'you've fucked my property and now you have to pay'. Cut to Liz and Nina in separate spotlights across the space but speaking to each other.
NINA:
Sex is a playground.
LIZ:
Or a battleground.
NINA:
To have sex is to go on a voyage of discovery.
LIZ:
Not if you're a prostitute, it isn't.
NINA:
(To audience) I have always considered myself to be a sexual explorer.
LIZ:
(To audience under her breath) I have always considered you to be a promiscuous cow.
Cut to Nick. NICK:
It's a shelter from the storm, that's all. It's no big deal. Life's a blur of constant, non-stop motion. You keep moving to stay sane, so when a woman looks at me... I feel safe inside a woman. It's that moment after orgasm, that release into nothingness. God, I love it. So when a woman looks at me… I can't help myself. I focus on nothing but the chase. I'm like a dog with its ears pricked. Like a wolf. A wolf in a good suit. Nick watches Aline, predatory.
ALINE:
Of course making love is wonderful, but it's not everything. I mean think about it; sex without love is just sex, but love without sex is still love. If all I could have was the touch of his fingers against my lips, I think it would be enough.
TWIN 1:
Oh really?
TWIN 2:
You reckon?
TWIN 1:
Well let's see about that!
225
They snap their fingers; cut to Andrea and Andrew in session. Scene Three ANDREW:
Impotent! But I don't understand it! How can I be impotent!
ANDREA:
Andrew, if I could just....
ANDREW:
I'm thirty for chrissakes.
ANDREA:
Andrew could you sit down.
ANDREW:
I mean for how can this be happening to me! It must be a medical condition; something that didn't show up in the tests.
ANDREA:
(Firmly) Andrew calm down!
ANDREW:
Calm down?! You're telling me to calm down, you're not the one who's fucking impotent! (Beat) I am so sorry, Andrea. I'm so sorry, that was unforgivable. I don't know why I'm behaving like this, this isn't like me at all.
ANDREA:
It's okay Andrew, it's understandable under the circumstances. Perhaps you'd like to sit down.
ANDREW:
Yes, I'm sorry.
ANDREA:
(Referring to her notes) Now... You're a journalist, is that right?
ANDREW:
Yeah.
ANDREA:
What sort of things do you write about?
ANDREW:
Do you think that could be affecting me?
ANDREA:
I was just making conversation, trying to put you at your ease.
ANDREW:
Oh I see. Well I do a lot of different stuff you know... I've just finished reviewing a Film Noire season.
ANDREA:
That must have been interesting.
ANDREW:
Yeah... Well I never really knew much about the genre before, but I did find it... Andrea would you mind if we skipped the small talk.
ANDREA:
I do need to try and get to know you a bit, Andrew. Impotence is a condition that often challenges the sense of self. Your sense of... well maleness. 227
ANDREW:
But you see that's just it, I don't have a problem with my sense of... maleness. At least I don't think I do. My parents were very open, you know, explore your options be true to who you are.
ANDREA:
So would you say you feel comfortable with your masculinity?
ANDREW:
I suppose. I never really felt that masculine.
ANDREA:
Have you ever been attracted to men?
ANDREW:
Oh Jesus! If I say no does that mean I'm in macho denial?
ANDREA:
(Laughing) No, I'll take your word for it.
ANDREW:
I'm not gay.
ANDREA:
Okay.
ANDREW:
So you think this has something to do with my own perception of myself as a guy. Like I've somehow lost touch with the cave-man inside me?
ANDREA:
Male impotence has many causes, once we rule out any medical conditions then we're looking for a psychological trigger. It could be anything; stress, depression, repressed memory, fear.
ANDREW:
Fear?!
ANDREA:
Yes. Well some men become intimidated by their partner's sex drive.
ANDREW:
But I'm not carrying those kind of hang-ups Andrea, and neither is Aline. We're the people reaping the benefits of the sexual revolution forty years on. We're the generation after generation 'X', we're the evolved offspring of the feminist and the 'new man'! I don't fear Aline's sexuality... or my own... I... Jesus, I can't believe this is happening.
ANDREA:
Andrew none of this may relate to you, I'm simply exploring...
ANDREW:
Maybe I've evolved too far, that's what you're thinking isn't it. Maybe I've lost the connection with what it is to be truly male. But then what is a man? How do you define masculinity? I mean if all this is about is testosterone, just give me an injection!
229
ANDREA:
Andrew look...
ANDREW:
We're living in a half-built cottage with an idiosyncratic septic tank; couldn't it just be stress related?
ANDREA:
That's my point, it could be a lot of things. We need to sift through everything to find out what it isn't as much as what it is.
ANDREW:
I see.
ANDREA:
I'm sorry, I know this is unpleasant, but I'm afraid there's no fast way of doing it. How is Aline?
ANDREW:
Oh fine. She keeps telling me it doesn't matter. I think she sees it as some kind of test.
ANDREA:
Of the relationship?
ANDREW:
Of our love. You know; is our love strong enough.
ANDREA:
And do you think it is?
ANDREW:
What if I don't recover? What if I'm like this forever...
ANDREA:
Andrew...
ANDREW:
She should be with other people. I couldn't expect her not to need... not to need... He trails off.
ANDREA:
Andrew at the moment, I'm as baffled as you are but if we get to the root of the problem then we can start solving it. Cut to the twins. Andrea and Andrew freeze.
TWIN 2:
But what if you can't find the problem?
TWIN 1:
Will love conquer all?
TWIN 2:
(Sitting on Andrew's knee) And where's Aline now...
TWIN 1:
(Stroking his hair) …monkey boy.
Scene Four The twins wheel Andrea and Andrew off past Aline who is dancing dreamily by herself. Funky club music creeps in. Her hair is down but she is wearing her glasses and a blue, zip-up raincoat. 231
As Nick approaches he takes his wedding ring off, pockets it and takes out some chocolate. He dances next to her eating it. She notices him, there is 'meaningful' eye-contact before she looks away. NICK:
Hi.
ALINE:
Hi.
NICK:
Chocolate?
ALINE:
Oh, no thank-you.
NICK:
Go on, it's my last piece.
ALINE:
Okay, if you insist.
NICK:
So what's a beautiful woman like you doing in a place like this?
ALINE:
Are you coming onto me?
NICK:
Of course.
Aline laughs, amused by his up-front attitude and flattered in spite of herself. The music changes to a slow blues. NICK:
Would you like to dance?
ALINE:
Oh, no thanks.
NICK:
Scared?
ALINE:
No!
NICK:
Well then, where's the harm?
ALINE:
(She considers) What do you do?
NICK:
Advertising copywriter; I make chocolate into sex. You?
ALINE:
Librarian - I lend books.
NICK:
Come on take pity on me.
ALINE:
Okay, I don't suppose you'll eat me. They dance together.
233
NICK:
Not unless you want me to. He pulls her a little closer. She thinks she's dancing with him to be polite.
NICK:
I like your coat. (She laughs) Why don't you take it off.
ALINE:
It is a bit hot. She removes her coat self-consciously and awkwardly, as if becoming naked in front of him. She hangs it up on one of the twins’ hands. They resume dancing.
ALINE:
You don't beat around the bush do you?
NICK:
Don't see the point. I find you attractive, why shouldn't I let you know.
ALINE:
Actually I'm in a relationship.
NICK:
No ring.
ALINE:
You checked my finger!
NICK:
(Holding up his hand) Didn't you?
ALINE:
A ring doesn't mean anything.
NICK:
No?
ALINE:
No, it's what's inside.
NICK:
So you love him.
ALINE:
Yes. We're in love.
NICK:
Ah, my loss. They dance. Gradually Aline closes her eyes and Nick presses his face into her hair.
NICK:
You smell so good. They have got closer and closer until eventually and quite organically they kiss, then she suddenly breaks away. He goes after her.
ALINE:
Sorry, no. I've made a mistake.
NICK:
Hey it's okay. No strings.
ALINE:
No I have to go. 235
NICK:
Wait just a minute. I have to tell you that this is an amazing thing for me. I haven't felt this kind of attraction for so long and I know you feel it too. I just... I want you; is that so bad? Two people meet and all they can have is one night; why not take it? I want to make love to you. There, I said it! I want to be inside you, put my cock inside you, touch your breasts, lick them, suck them, fuck you, I want to fuck you. Feel that dull, heat licking at the back of my balls and you begging me not to cum; "Don't cum, not yet, hold on. Please, please. Please keep fucking me". Beat. She kisses him passionately and then as suddenly breaks away.
ALINE:
No, No! I have to go. The twins pass her coat back and forth until she grabs it.
NICK:
Hey it's okay.
ALINE:
No I have to go.
She feverishly puts the coat back on and zips it up right to the top before rushing out. ALINE:
It was really nice meeting you but I... I... Nick takes another bar of chocolate out of his pocket and eats it chunk by chunk watching after her. The twins saunter over, lean on his shoulders and also watch after her.
TWIN 1:
I bet she bangs like a barn door.
TWIN 2:
She had that look about her, didn't she?
TWIN 1:
Hungry behind the eyes.
TWIN 2:
Yeah, needy.
TWIN 1:
Must be losing your touch Nicky boy. Nick seems about to go after Aline but the twins step in front of him and he suddenly acknowledges their presence i.e. he can see then now.
TWINS:
Hi.
237
NICK:
Hi.
TWINS:
We're the twins.
NICK:
Have we met before?
TWIN 1:
Oh yeah.
NICK:
Yeah?
TWIN 2:
We're big fans of your work.
Scene Five ANDREA:
Sexual imagery and the discussion of sexual ability or prowess are highly prevalent today and yet within a significant proportion of modern-day relationships there can be a fundamental breakdown of communication when dealing with the actuality of sexual practice. If I could ask you to take part, by way of example, in a short exercise. I'd like you to close your eyes and think of a romantic encounter you have experienced. Something you would consider special, beautiful, mutual.
NICK:
(Taking his wedding ring out of his pocket and putting it back on) Our wedding day. It was lovely.
I remember watching her come up the aisle holding my breath, in case she'd disappear. She was a vision. An angel. Smiling at me with those big blue eyes. ANDREA:
Good. Now try and recall an erotic fantasy. Something you would find actively arousing, perhaps something you would use to achieve orgasm.
ELIZABETH:
(In separate spotlight on a different stage level. Nervous enjoyment) I do masturbate quite a lot. I've never told my husband... I'm not sure if he knows or presumes... but he doesn't seem to like it if I'm too sexual... I mean we have a good sex life... but it's when I'm alone that I tend to let my thoughts run wild. I imagine I'm... well in one of them... I imagine that I do it with a wolf. It's... well you see he chases me and I can't run any further and he pounces on me and I think he's going to kill me but instead he just... he sniffs me... all over and... and then I turn into a wolf as well and we do it, we fuck and well that's usually when I cum. (Laughing) I mean I don't really want to do it with a wolf.
239
ANDREA:
So. (pausing to moisten her lips - Andrea's own sexual frustration begins to surface) When there is such a differentiation between romantic love and sexual desire. How do we negotiate our desires? The twins wheel themselves back on, on two chairs - they build to orgasm vocally underneath the following.
ANDREA:
(Slightly rushed) Within any cross-section of the 'so-called' average population one is faced with a diversity of sexual requirements and an enormous variety of arousal triggers; an electrical hum reminiscent of a vibrator may trigger arousal for some women and indeed some men. (Losing it slightly) For others it may be smell or touch or visual stimulation and very often it's a combination. (Raising her voice trying to get it back) My point is...
TWIN 2:
(Gasping) What's you're point? What's your point?
ANDREA:
(Increasing volume) My point is... that it is important not to judge patients on what arouses them. Indeed, we are all a Pandora's Box of hidden desires and sexual secrets. We all have
needs. For god's sake we all have needs. Even I have needs. TWINS:
Tell us. Tell us.
ANDREA:
The therapist should never intrude her own personal life, it's unprofessional and irrelevant.
TWINS:
Tell us! Tell us!
ANDREA:
(Shouts) Oh alright! It comes in waves, the desire. Nothing for days and then suddenly I'm overwhelmed - fantasies play constantly in my head like looped films. I saw Michelangelo's David once; huge and beautiful and I tried to imagine what it would be like to be... fucked by him. Filled right up to the top. Yes I'm inundated by mental pornography. Images break over me like waves a state of near constant arousal. I may seem cool and contained as I sit cross-legged listening to pain and small betrayals but let me tell you, I am a riot of sensual perceptors. Even the pressure of my crossed thighs causes me agonies of awareness. I try to remain detached, aloof but one can't remain detached from ones own need. It's like a gnawing at my gut, I am hollowed out, open, expectant. 241
An intense building noise, like a hurricane approaching. The blood sings in my ears and any minute I expect to see the furniture shake and hear the windows rattle because David has climbed down from his stoney plinth and is striding, naked towards me. Suddenly the lights change and sound cuts out. Sam is suddenly standing there. SAM:
Sorry, were you calling me?
ANDREA:
(She gasps with shock then recovers) No. No. Sorry, I was just reading some notes for a lecture. And you are?
SAM:
Sam... the decorator. Can I get in here now?
ANDREA:
What do you mean? Slight pause
SAM:
Are you alright?
ANDREA:
Yes, I'm fine. Slight pause
SAM:
So when can I do it?
ANDREA:
Do what?!
SAM:
Paint the room.
ANDREA:
Oh. Em, well not now. I've got a session in (She checks watch) five minutes, Shit! Could you sort it out with my receptionist.
SAM:
Okay. You're the boss. Cut to the twins lighting up a cigarette and sharing it as if they've just had sex.
Scene Six TWIN 1:
I love oral.
TWIN 2:
Me too. Asserting themselves.
TWIN 1:
It's a well known fact 243
TWIN 2:
That the human species are full of crap.
TWIN 1:
Take sex for example.
TWIN 2:
You can't just own that you want it, can you?
TWIN 1:
That you think about it every minute of the day.
TWIN 2:
Oh no. You have to create an elaborate system of stop and go,
TWIN 1:
…of yes and no.
TWIN 2:
What are you people on?!
TWIN 1:
Take Saint Augustine now,
TWIN 2:
We used to hang out with him,
TWIN 1:
Visited him nightly, wore him out with our attentions,
TWIN 2:
But did he declare free love for all?
TWIN 1:
No!
TWIN 2:
He called all women whores and banned it all. His cock still red raw.
TWIN 1:
What a cunt! They laugh as if at a happy, nostalgic memory.
TWINS:
But back to the plot. They disappear as Andrea appears in another tight spot.
ANDREA:
(Out) Hi Andrew, sorry to keep you waiting, come on in. Her light snaps out as Andrew's snaps up.
ANDREW:
Hi. (Lights up on Nina's book shop) So did my books come in yet Nina?
Scene Seven NINA:
Andrew, how nice to see you. You look wonderful. Your love life is good I think.
ANDREW:
(Laughing uncomfortably) Yeah... We've been doing a lot of work on the house. We got the well sunk and so... yeah we've been busy. 245
NINA:
Ah, the little house by the sea, of course, this is why you are so brown, and now you have fresh water, how wonderful. I remember when I was child, I fell into a well, I was angry with my mother and wanted to hide but I fell all the way in, yes, yes, it was terrible although in some ways a wonderful baptism, but that's quite another story. So what can I do for you my darling?
ANDREW:
I was just wondering if the books I ordered came in yet.
NINA:
Ah yes, let me see (consulting a list) 'The Psychology of Male Sexual Arousal', 'Passionate Love and Companionate Love' and 'The Dysfunctional Male'. Quite a list Andrew; I look forward to reading the article.
ANDREW:
Well I don't know if it'll be published, it's more of an idea for an article really...
NINA:
And it is about impotence, yes?
ANDREW:
Yeah... No. No. It's about changes in the male libido - that kind of thing. I probably would look at impotence but that would just be one small part.
But, you know, I really need to do a lot more research before I submit it at all. NINA:
And there's another one here - a biography of James Cagney; 'The Tough Guy'.
ANDREW:
Did I order that?
NINA:
Yes, yes - it's here on your list. Now let's see. She goes to look for the books.
ANDREW:
(To himself) Why would I order that? I finished all the Noire stuff.
NINA:
I can't find anything... No. (Returning emptyhanded) I'm sorry Andrew they haven't come in yet. You know Freud was terrified of the vagina.
ANDREW:
I beg your pardon?
NINA:
The 'Vagina Dentata'! I mean have you ever heard of anything so ridiculous? Men becoming impotent because they think the vagina will bite their penis off. I ask you, if men worried about that why would they want to put it in your mouth all the time?! 247
ANDREW:
Er... That's a good point, Nina. But you know Freud also said; "sometimes a cigar is only a cigar".
NINA:
Oh yes and sometimes a well is only a well - but sometimes it isn't eh Andrew! (Laughing) Sexuality is such a wonderful thing, do you know my fantasy Andrew?
ANDREW:
Em, no.
NINA:
I should like to be Thetis Creatrix, the shapeshifter. How delightful to change ones shape, to exchange ones skin perhaps even swap gender back and forth. To experience everything and not to be bound by frame or... age. But Andrew, I'm sorry, I'm running on again.
ANDREW:
No, no. It's fascinating. Thetis was the mother of Achilles right?
NINA:
Yes, well done Andrew. In the end, you see, the poor girl couldn't shift her shape fast enough and so Peleus caught her, tied her to a rock and had his wicked way with her.
ANDREW:
Well I guess today they'd say that was the reason Achilles was flawed.
NINA:
(Disdainfully) Oh probably, but I prefer the original story; she loved him in spite of his forced conception and so she dipped him in immortality.
ANDREW:
All except for his heel.
NINA:
Yes. So what is your fantasy, my darling?
ANDREW:
I beg your pardon?
NINA:
I want to be Thetis the shape-shifter, who should you like to be? The lights change and a saxophone plays smoky music as Andrew is thrown a hat and becomes Mike Spanner, private eye. The actor who plays Sam becomes Joe the barman. At the same time the twins appear and sashay across stage smoking.
Scene Eight MIKE:
The name's Spanner. Mike Spanner, private eye.
TWIN 1:
We heard a lot about you Mr. Spanner. 249
MIKE:
Is that so.
TWIN 2:
We want to hire your services.
MIKE:
I'm not a baby-sitter.
TWIN 1:
We ain't no babies.
MIKE:
(Out) I didn't know who these crazy dames were but one thing I did know - they were trouble. Double trouble. Joe, how about some drinks out here?
JOE:
You breaking dame's hearts again Mike?
MIKE:
Sure Joe, sure. Now send us over some scotch and water, and go easy on the water... (To the Twins ) Too much and I get seasick.
TWIN 1:
We got a proposition for you Mr. Spanner...
TWIN 2:
...and we think you're going to like it.
MIKE:
Yeah, sugar-lips and what would that be?
TWIN 2:
We heard you got an itch that you just can't scratch.
TWIN 1:
Well we got long nails, Mr. Spanner, and we know how to use them.
MIKE:
(Out) I'd heard of these dames before - they was poison. They'd suck out everything a guy had to give and then disappear before he had time to check his fillings. (To them) Beat it, I'm a onewoman man. Andrea suddenly enters from the other side of the stage with a switch-blade, as a Noire persona.
ANDREA:
There you are Mike Spanner, you two-timing sonof-a-bitch. She has her hand back to throw the blade at Mike but Joe enters, grabs her arm and spins her around.
JOE:
Not so fast sister.
ANDREA:
(To Mike while being restrained) Make love to me all night, then walk out the door would you?!
TWINS:
One-woman man huh? (The twins fade out).
251
MIKE:
(Out) I couldn't remember where I'd seen her before, but I wasn't hanging round 'til my memory caught up with me. He exits.
JOE:
(still struggling with Andrea) Hey lady relax, what's your beef?
ANDREA:
Let me go you big gorilla.
JOE:
Yeah, sure. If you promise to be real nice and calm down.
ANDREA:
Okay, okay - I promise. He lets her go, she straightens her skirt, checks her hair, kisses him then slaps him.
JOE:
Lady make up your mind. They kiss.
ANDREW:
Andrea? Lights come up on Andrew is sitting as if in a session in Andrea's 'office'.
ANDREW:
Andrea?
ANDREA:
(snapping out of the fantasy and looking toward Andrew) Sorry Andrew. I went off on a bit of a mental tangent.
JOE:
Jesus sister, you're giving out more signals than a rookie traffic cop. He evaporates. Andrea drops the physicality of her Noire persona and sits down into the session.
Scene Nine ANDREA:
What were you saying?
ANDREW:
I was telling you about the dream I keep having where I'm the private-eye... guy. It's like I write this article about a bunch of old gangster movies and now every time I go to sleep I’ in one. Look I even bought this hat (he pulls it out of his jacket) I had a compulsion. And a biography of Jimmy Cagney.
ANDREA:
Well it sounds like you're exploring a masculine archetype. Dreams are often like fantasies; they can reflect real desires but also they're a playground. A sort of safe exploratory space, 253
where we can be whoever we want and do whatever we want without any consequences. (During this section, Sam crawls towards Andrea across the floor. when he reaches her he kisses her feet, her legs and her neck - this is all in her mind so she continues normally, but is totally distracted throughout). For example, some people dream or fantasize about being made love to against their will, which isn't to say they want to be raped, but rather that they're looking for a scenario where they don't have to take any responsibility for the sexual act. Where they can explore different situations; multiple partners, S&M, - things that are taboo... SAM:
This isn't taboo.
ANDREA:
I have straightforward tastes.
SAM:
Nobody has straightforward tastes. What do you want?
ANDREA:
Oh god, I want you to....
ANDREW:
Andrea?
ANDREA:
I'm sorry. Sorry Andrew... em...Yes, it would seem your subconscious is trying to analyse the problem. This kind of dream exploration is often symptomatic of erectile disfunction.
ANDREW:
I see. Erectile disfunction.
ANDREA:
It's the medical term Andrew, it's supposed to avoid any pejorative overtones but we can stick with 'impotence' if you'd prefer. (Fantasy Sam walks off slowly backwards looking at Andrea. she has to keep stopping herself looking at him).
ANDREW:
I think I'd prefer to stick with potence or maybe erectile function. I was cracking a little joke there Andrea.
ANDREA:
I'm sorry Andrew would you mind terribly if we called it a day. I'm having the place painted and I think the fumes are affecting my concentration.
ANDREW:
Okay, no. Sure.
ANDREA:
Listen, I'm really sorry, I won't charge you for the session. He gets up and shakes her hand a little sad and goes to leave. 255
ANDREA:
Andrew. He stops and turns back.
ANDREA:
How are the exercises going?
ANDREW:
Oh good, yeah, we've been gradually re-exploring each others’ bodies.
ANDREA:
But you haven't rushed ahead and tried to make love have you?
ANDREW:
Oh god no. No. Well, you know, there's still nothing really happening down there. Andrea exits. Andrew knocks his fedora into shape and puts it on. The twins re-emerge.
TWIN 2:
(Walking along side Andrew as he exits) I'm hungry again.
TWIN 1:
You heard the woman - he can't get it up. Cut to Nina in spotlight. She delivers this monologue out as if to an audience.
Scene Ten NINA:
Even as a small girl I had lovers, not real lovers of course, but even then I loved men. I found the role-models my mother and my grand-mother presented to me uninteresting; they were dutiful and obedient and I was obviously neither. And then there were my uncles; one was a priest - he ended up in an asylum - but that's quite another story, and the other was in the army and of course this lead to philandering and gambling and drinking and women and all that. But what could I do? There was no freedom, I was envious. And so I embraced a new life. I began to discover the wondrous joys of sexual fulfillment. Ah, there were so many beautiful complications with every affair. All artists of course; writers, painters - so passionate, but that's quite another story. And that was, of course, where I met Alex - in that circle and then after he left - I began to write myself short stories, reviews, poetry. I was very lonely then, suicidal sometimes, but my creativity and my lovers were my therapy. Of course it had to stop; the constant traveling, the men, the writing - it was wearing me out and my beautiful son was growing and so I took the book shop and I went into hibernation. I have lay dormant for a long time. But you know maturity and watching my beautiful 257
son become a man has changed everything. I am making a return... to men. And already I feel wonderful - my skin is glowing. Lot's more complications. Lots more mysteries - who is next? The lighting changes to include Nick and Liz; who were in fact, her audience. NINA:
But I've stayed too long again. Nick, my child, my boy. Give your mother a kiss. (He kisses her on both cheeks. She puts her hand to his face and lingers a moment before breaking her reverie) Good night my darling. (Over her shoulder) Goodnight Elizabeth. She exits.
LIZ:
Why does she do that in front of me?
NICK:
It's just her sense of the dramatic. Not jealous are you?
LIZ:
(She ignores him and sits down, considering him) So the hunt is on.
NICK:
What?
LIZ:
Nina is hunting again - for another husband.
NICK:
So it would seem.
LIZ:
Doesn't that make you feel odd?
NICK:
It's her life.
LIZ:
Why didn't you ask her about Alex?
NICK:
Ach Lizzie, I don't like to upset her.
LIZ:
You have a right to know.
NICK:
Maybe she really doesn't know where he is.
LIZ:
Alex? The love of her life? The greatest passion she ever encountered. (impersonating Nina)"He was my soul-mate which is, of course, why I conceived, but that's quite another story." She normally talks about him for hours - she skipped over him in three seconds tonight. It's since you started digging around, trying to unravel all her stories.
NICK:
She'll tell me when she's ready.
LIZ:
She's hiding something Nick. 259
NICK:
Look, I don't want to talk about it Lizzie.
LIZ:
What do you want to talk about then? Why you were so late.
NICK:
I told you, I was working.
LIZ:
Do you still love me?
NICK:
What a fucking question - of course I do. I love you, you love me - it's that simple. (Calming down. Playful) I married you didn't I?
LIZ:
Yes, but sometimes I don't understand why.
NICK:
Lizzie I love you! Okay?
LIZ:
Okay.
NICK:
The first time I saw you, you were listening to music in the park, do you remember, you looked so serene, which was a miracle because the noise coming out of the band was fucking awful. (Almost to himself) I wanted some of that, some of that calm. You were like a blank page. An empty pool I wanted to dive in.
Liz is aroused. Initially she touches Nick at arms length, gradually moulding her body into his before kissing him. He grows increasingly uncomfortable and finally breaks away. NICK:
Lizzie.
LIZ:
Let's make love.
NICK:
You were so fresh. Like a breath of fresh air. So clean.
LIZ:
Compared to Nina?
NICK:
What?
LIZ:
Clean, compared to your mother?
NICK:
No... I
LIZ:
I'm her antidote, is that it?
NICK:
(Getting angry) What?
LIZ:
Nothing.
261
NICK:
I love my mother.
LIZ:
You think I don't know that.
NICK:
What's that supposed to mean?
LIZ:
I don't know. Nothing. I didn't mean...
NICK:
You think I want to fuck my mother?
LIZ:
Stop it Nick!
NICK:
You really think I want to fuck my mother?!
LIZ:
Well you don't want to fuck me! Pause.
NICK:
Lizzie...
LIZ:
I didn't mean to say that. He holds her by the arms facing him.
NICK:
I love you.
LIZ:
I know.
NICK:
(Upset) I love you so much.
LIZ:
I know. (Comforting him) I'm sorry.
NICK:
You're my princess. My sweetheart. My beautiful girl. Snap change. Nick fades away. Elizabeth delivers the monologue out to the audience. Twins appear behind her, also looking out - involved.
LIZ:
Yes, I'm a beautiful girl. I'm a virgin bride, running unseen against the snow, in my white bride's cloak. Escaping into the forest. Jumping... out of the frying pan into the fire. Running, running, running unseen but smelt. Smelt and pursued. Night hunted. My stomach sick with new fear as the maw of the beast pants white hot behind me.
TWIN 1:
He's coming, he's coming.
LIZ:
White breath, white pelt, white teeth.
TWIN 2:
He's coming, he's coming...
263
LIZ:
...and my breath catches sharp against my throat as I fall blindly, wind myself, pant hard like the wolf who pursues me and hearing the beast at my back scream out into the wilderness. (Low) Then I hear it. The rush of nothing before the hard, hot impact. His muzzle at my neck, the hot breath in my ear, and oh, the weight and strength of him.
TWIN 1:
He's sniffing you.
TWIN 2:
Smelling and licking you.
LIZ:
Transforming me as the shaggy pelt of his groin finds my naked haunches. Fucking me. And the she-wolf bays and howls at the moon as her cloak waves goodbye from the top of the tree. (Sharp in and out breath from the twins) And that's when I cum. Cut to.
ANDREA:
The Masters and Johnson Report from the early sixties was the first to indicate that orgasm is highly beneficial to the female, both in terms of maintaining a healthy vagina and stimulating positive hormonal and cortical response. Recent studies also indicate that women who are celibate for long periods are healthier if they masturbate
regularly. It's not enough simply to allow that women enjoy sex as much, if not in some cases more, than men. It is now apparent that women should be actively encouraged to aspire to a high level of orgasmic out-put in order to maintain good physical health and robust mental well-being. I'm sorry I seem to have strayed off the point there slightly. Are there any questions? SAM:
(Backlit - posed like David) When Andrea, when? He disappears. Andrea rubs her hand across her face. Cross-fade to Aline asleep with Twin 1 standing over her.
Scene Eleven TWIN 1:
Sssh. She's sleeping. Twin 2 joins her. Gently they touch her hair and eyelashes and smell her.
TWIN 1:
You're all such pretty things.
TWIN 2:
Sweat-sweet, sticky things.
TWIN 2:
Too fragile though.
265
TWIN 1:
Oh yeah, too fragile by far. Sound of a skewed alarm clock comes in loud and then fades. Roughly they wake her. Aline is sleep-fuddled but dreamily compliant.
ALINE:
Oh my god, what time is it?
TWIN 1:
Come on get up - it's your wedding day!
ALINE:
What?
TWIN 2:
You're getting married in four hours!
ALINE:
But the invitations haven't even gone out yet.
TWIN 1:
Have you got your dress?
ALINE:
No, where's my dress?
TWIN 2:
Quick, quick get the dress. Twin 1 brings out a kitchen apron.
TWIN 2:
Oh it's lovely. Isn't it lovely?
ALINE:
Well it's not quite what I had in mind.
They put her into it. TWIN 1:
But it's lovely and look here's your veil. They put a tea-towel on her head.
ALINE:
Oh yes. I have to have a veil.
TWIN 1:
Now the questionnaire.
TWIN 2:
You don't mind answering a few personal questions do you?
ALINE:
Well I don't know.
TWIN 1:
Andrew answered them all.
ALINE:
Did he?
TWIN 2:
Yes Andrew was very helpful.
TWIN 1:
All you have to do is match his answers.
TWIN 2:
All of them.
TWIN 1:
Like "Mr & Mrs". 267
TWIN 2:
Then we'll all be sure its okay for you to get married.
TWIN 1:
That you're compatible. Everybody does it.
ALINE:
I never heard of it before.
TWIN 1:
Who's his favourite actor?
ALINE:
Em, James Cagney?
TWIN 2:
How many fingers am I holding up? Giving her the finger.
ALINE:
One!
TWIN 2:
Does he take you from behind?
ALINE:
What?! Andrew didn't tell you that.
TWIN 1:
Come on, a little bit of backdoor never hurt anyone.
TWIN 2:
Or do you save that for the strangers, the men with sweeties.
ALINE:
Nothing happened. Nothing happened I swear - I just kissed him.
TWIN 1:
You can't live without cock can you?
ALINE:
That's not true!
TWIN 2:
Yes it is. No wonder Andrew feels betrayed.
ALINE:
You told him!
TWIN 1:
Perhaps he just doesn't want you.
TWIN 2:
And that's why he can't get it up.
TWIN 1:
Ever thought about that. You'd be off the hook.
ALINE:
Stop it. Just shut up. He does want me. He does! Who are you anyway?
TWIN 1:
(Mock hurt) Maraid. Maraid and Sinead.
TWIN 2:
We're your bridesmaids.
TWIN 1:
Come on, no time for tears. We have to practice the aisle. 269
ALINE:
What?
TWIN 1:
Walking up the aisle; go on! (Aline takes a few tentative steps) No, no, no! Watch Sinead. Twin 2 walks slinkily before getting down on all fours and crawling. Aline tries to copy her and is trying to crawl sexily as the twins melt off.
Scene Twelve She is humming the wedding march to herself when Andrew comes on and finds her. ANDREW:
Aline? Aline are you okay? She wakes up. They are sitting on the floor together.
ALINE:
Where am I?
ANDREW:
You're in the kitchen. I think you were sleep... crawling.
ALINE:
What am I wearing?!
ANDREW:
You were humming; 'here comes the bride'.
ALINE:
I was not!
ANDREW:
Some kind of troglodyte wedding, I think.
ALINE:
(She laughs, then thinks) I can't remember it.
ANDREW:
I came up to bed and you weren't there. (Serious) I got quite a fright.
ALINE:
Oh baby. They kiss and he holds her.
ANDREW:
Do you want to get married?
ALINE:
Andrew you don't believe in marriage.
ANDREW:
Yeah, well that's just a life-long conviction. (They laugh) I'm serious. Will you marry me? A big grin is spreading over her face just as she remembers the dream.
ALINE:
Oh my god - I just remembered what that dream was about! (getting upset) Oh it was horrible. There were these two women, these twins. They
271
were supposed to be my bridesmaids but they were asking me all this stuff about you and... ANDREW:
Twins? That's a coincidence... She has started to cry.
ANDREW:
Hey. Come on it was only a dream. Dreams don't mean anything.
ALINE:
(A shift) Andrew I have to tell you something.
ANDREW:
I'm not going to like it am I.
ALINE:
I met a man. (He doesn't respond quickly - she hurries on) I went to this club - on my own, just to be alone and dance - but this man came over and we ended up dancing together. I'm not sure how it happened even but he started talking to me and the next thing I knew I had kissed him. And then I left. Nothing else happened. I don't know why I did it.
ANDREW:
(Slowly, quietly) Well that's great. That makes me feel great.
ALINE:
I don't want anyone else but you Andrew. I'm sorry, I'm so sorry.
ANDREW:
Why should you be sorry. I'm the one who's impotent.
ALINE:
It doesn't matter. I love you Andrew. It doesn't matter to me.
ANDREW:
Then why are you kissing a fucking stranger?! I look at you and I want you and... nothing. I just... I desire you so much and I have this problem and it doesn't help me to think about you with someone else.
ALINE:
(Starting to cry again) I didn't know if you still wanted me. In the dream they said you didn't want me.
ANDREW:
That was just a stupid dream. I want you. I want you! (Upset) But I can't fucking have you. He exits. Aline is left in her mock wedding gear.
ALINE:
Andrew.
Scene Thirteen 273
The intense hurricane noise from earlier. ANDREA:
(Banging something in the dark) Ow! Sam enters.
SAM:
Who's there?
ANDREA:
(Rubbing her nose and forehead) Why isn't the light in the hall working?
SAM:
Sorry I had to take it down to do the ceiling. Are you okay?
ANDREA:
I walked into the coat stand. What are you doing here?
SAM:
I could say the same to you. Look, your receptionist said it'd be okay. I've been trying to get in here since yesterday and I decided the best thing was just to stay on after hours and get it done.
ANDREA:
(Tuts) Tch!
SAM:
I'm sorry, but to paint your office I have to have access to your office.
ANDREA:
I know. It's just I have this lecture to finish and this is the only time... Oh no (She pinches her nose and puts her head back) I think it's starting to bleed.
SAM:
Come here. Gently but expertly he cups the back of her neck with one hand while pushing the heel of his other hand against her nose and forehead. She immediately drops her arms and is totally relaxed They hold this for five beats and then he releases her.
ANDREA:
It's stopped. How did you do that?
SAM:
Magic. Look, I've just done the last coat. It'll take half an hour to dry, tops. Why don't you sit down and have a cup of tea. (She thinks) Then I'll be out of your way. I promise.
ANDREA:
Okay. Thanks. She puts her pile of papers/files away and sits. He pours two cups of tea from a flask and hands one to her. 275
SAM:
So you're a therapist, yeah?
ANDREA:
Yes.
SAM:
Physio or psycho?
ANDREA:
I'm a psychotherapist.
SAM:
Cognitive, behavioural, psychoanalytic?
ANDREA:
You're well informed for a...
SAM:
Painter-Decorator?
ANDREA:
I didn't mean it to sound like that.
SAM:
Med' school drop-out. I was quite interested in clinical psychiatry.
ANDREA:
Why did you leave?
SAM:
Couldn't take the pace. So do you specialise?
ANDREA:
You might say. (Beat, where she finally relaxes) I'm a sex therapist.
SAM:
(Confused) Oh. (Realisation) But you can't put that up on the door, right.
ANDREA:
No, it's hard enough to get some of my clients to come into the office anyway. So I'm just a plain old therapist to the uninitiated.
SAM:
I wouldn't say you were plain or old. Cut to Aline on the beach with a torch. She is looking for Andrew. Sam and Andrea hold their positions.
ALINE:
Andrew!.. Andrew are you out here... Andrew... Andrew please... ANDREW! She exits. Andrew is revealed with a half empty bottle of tequila. He pulls his fedora over his eyes and goes to sleep. The twins appear and very quickly remove Andrea's shoes, let down her hair and replace the tea with whiskey, leaving the bottle. They disappear and the scene starts up again. A few hours later Andrea and Sam are much more at ease with each other but not drunk.
SAM:
(mid sentence)... when I was in Australia - it's an aboriginal trick. 277
ANDREA:
Well it worked. You'll have to teach me how to do it, I'm always getting nose bleeds.
SAM:
Ah but you can't do it to yourself.
ANDREA:
Like so many things. Cheers (They click mugs) So, why all the traveling?
SAM:
I was interested in alternative medicine. I suppose it was a sort of quest.
ANDREA:
For what?
SAM:
For healing…
ANDREA:
(Intuitively) And were you healed?
SAM:
As a matter of fact I was.
ANDREA:
So why did you leave medical school? (He looks away) Sorry, that's none of my business.
SAM:
No it's fine. It's just it's a bad story; I come out of it badly.
ANDREA:
I'm pretty good at 'non-judgemental'.
SAM:
I found my ex-girlfriend in bed with another student doctor and tried to kill him.
ANDREA:
Your ex-girlfriend?
SAM:
Yeah - I can't even remember what she looks like now. I'd burst into her room in the res' and tried to strangle the guy she was with. She was shouting at me to calm down and then she managed to get in between us but all I could think about was that she was pushing me away. (Beat) So I went for him again, more fucking determined than ever but by then a big gang of the porters had arrived and I was pulled off and strapped to a gurney. The house doctor had to give me fifty miligrammes of diazepam to calm me down. Told you it wasn't very pretty.
ANDREA:
Were you kicked out?
SAM:
No. No charges were pressed. I just left. I needed to sort myself out.
ANDREA:
So you went traveling?
SAM:
Yeah. 279
They lean in about to kiss, but freeze. The twins turn them slowly, in their swivel chairs, maintaining the exact distance between them but allowing the audience to see them from all angles. TWIN 1:
Mmm, smell them.
TWIN 2:
Just pumping out those pheromones. They replace them, only closer together. They unfreeze and suddenly precipitated too close, too fast, they avoid the kiss. They are both embarrassed.
ANDREA:
I didn't realise it'd got so late.
TWINS:
Shit!
SAM:
(Tentatively) Look do you fancy... (going out for a drink sometime)?
ANDREA:
(Too quickly and covering embarrassment with friendliness) No. I can't...
SAM:
Okay. No. No problem. (Beat) Look, I've taken up too much of your time already. I'll just get my gear and I'll be off. He exits.
ANDREA/TWINS:
Shit!
Blackout. Spotlight up on Aline, in a belted rain mac, smoking nervously (she's in Noir character). Mike Spanner enters behind her, startling her. Lights up. Scene Fourteen MIKE:
You're not sure if I'm gonna hit you or kiss you. Well I don't hit women. He throws her cigarette away and kisses her.
ALINE:
(Struggling free) You take a lotta liberties mister. Just who the hell do you think you are?
MIKE:
The fellah you arranged to meet here, toots. I'm the man on the other end of the line, the guy you being pouring your heart out to these last few days. The schmuck who's been listening to the
281
sad sound of you sobbing and promised to help out 'cos he felt sorry for you. ALINE:
Oh my god! It is you... I thought you'd be older.
MIKE:
I am older. She starts to cry.
MIKE:
Hey lady don't cry. This is the kinda place a blubbin' dame attracts the wrong kind of attention. (Softening) Listen sugar lips, you keep that up, you'll blur round the edges. She searches for a hankie, he gives her one (a hankie that is).
MIKE:
Joe, how about some service? Sam enters as Joe the barman in a long white apron polishing a glass.
JOE:
You breaking dame's hearts again Mike?
MIKE:
(Out) That was some joke. The dame in question was about as likely to fall in love with me as I was. Sure Joe, sure. Now send us over some scotch
and water - and go easy on the water... (To Aline) Too much and I get seasick. ALINE:
Isn't it a little early in the day for a drink?
MIKE:
It's never too early for a drink, sweetheart.
ALINE:
(Recovered) I'm sorry Mr. Spanner...
MIKE:
Call me Mike.
ALINE:
Mike... it's just that since my man went missing I just... I didn't know where to turn. (She nearly starts to cry again but controls herself) I'm sorry. You said something about a lead?
MIKE:
It's nothing concrete, I gotta ask you some questions and follow it up.
ALINE:
But I don't understand I thought you'd found a clue. Couldn't you have asked me questions over the phone?
MIKE:
Not these questions doll. (Aside) I needed to see her face when I asked if she loved him and after that kiss, I needed to know for myself as well as
283
for that lucky son-of-a-... (Suddenly to her) Do you love him? ALINE:
(She gasps) Of course I love him. What woman wouldn't. He's handsome and funny and clever and just that little bit wild. If he was dead I... I couldn't bear it.
MIKE:
(Aside) I'd got my answer. She thought he was Mr. Wonderful. How could I compete with that? I was just some washed-up private dick with nothing to my name but a bar tab the length of Wall Street and a deringer that was out of bullets!
ALINE:
(Crying into his shoulder) Oh Mr. Spanner - he will be alright won't he?
MIKE:
(Putting his arms around her) Sure he will, honey, it's all gonna work out just fine. (Out) It was everything about her; the smell of her hair, the warmth of her body. Why couldn't I have a dame like this? But then he was the kind of guy that deserved her. He was flash and funny and could probably give her the world and I was a just some two-bit putz wearing a tear-stained tuxedo.
ALINE:
Oh Mike, I feel so safe here in your arms. Like a human being again.
MIKE:
Lady you ain't a human being - you're a waltz. Suddenly the sound of a glass being smashed. Cut to Elizabeth shouting at Nick.
Scene Fifteen LIZ:
You bastard!
NICK:
(With a cut over his eye) For fucks sake Lizzie, calm down.
LIZ:
Why the fuck should I?! Here you can have my ring as well. (Pulling off her wedding ring and throwing it at him) Now I can screw around too is that the way it works?!
NICK:
You asked me why I wasn't wearing it and I told you the truth.
LIZ:
Well you should have lied. (He takes her by the arms) Let go of me. Get off!
NICK:
I wanted everything out in the open. I'm tired of lying. 285
LIZ:
What so you can do it under my nose; 'move over Lizzie I've brought someone home'?
NICK:
No! Don't be stupid. I just want to try and work something out.
LIZ:
You want to reach an accommodation is that it? A negotiated settlement where you get to fuck other people because it's all 'out in the open'?
NICK:
No! I don't know.
LIZ:
That is what you want isn't it?! You want me to be on the team. Hey, I could be bait. I could lure dykes and men into bed for you.
NICK:
Shut up Lizzie!
LIZ:
Then I can make tea for everyone. 'Cos I don't get to sit on anyone's cock, do I?
NICK:
Just shut up.
LIZ:
I don't even get to sit on your cock any more, do I. No because I'm your fucking virgin doll!
He slaps her. NICK:
I'm sorry. He goes to touch her.
LIZ:
Don't touch me!
NICK:
You wanted the truth.
LIZ:
Get out.
NICK:
Lizzie please.
LIZ:
Just get out! He exits. Slowly, almost sensually she touches her face where he slapped her.
LIZ:
(To herself) For a couple of seconds I had it all; his attention and his passion.
Scene Sixteen Sam is sitting at a bar, staring ahead with a bottle of beer in front of him. Nick enters with a beer and sits down. They don't know each other. They are both quite drunk. Pause. 287
NICK:
(Out of nowhere) 'Thriller!'
SAM:
(Regarding him) What?
NICK:
'Thriller'. If I was a Michael Jackson album...
SAM:
...you'd be 'Thriller'.
NICK:
I think so definitely.
SAM:
Right.
NICK:
It's a game we used to play at school.
SAM:
What Michael Jackson album you'd be?
NICK:
Or whatever, could be anything; car, album, type of pasta.
SAM:
What... (type of pasta were you)?
NICK:
Alphabetti spaghetti. Andrew enters. He is blitzed.
ANDREW:
(Out, as Mike Spanner) It was late. I'd been walking around downtown like a dog with no owner, but it was no good I just couldn't shift that pain in my chest where my heart ought to be. He sits.
SAM:
(To Andrew) Sorry, did you say something?
ANDREW:
Oh, no I was talking to myself. (Beat) My girlfriend just told me she...
NICK:
Slept with another guy?
ANDREW:
No! God no. She kissed him. She kissed this guy, that was all.
SAM:
I nearly kissed someone tonight.
NICK:
I just told my wife I was unfaithful.
SAM:
Yeah? I really wanted to kiss her.
NICK:
I have a talent for making women happy.
SAM:
Is that how come your face is bleeding?
289
NICK:
She thinks I don't love her.
SAM:
I'm out of practice.
ANDREW:
Tell me about it!
NICK:
But I do. I mean, she's not like the others, she's my wife.
SAM:
You ever hear the story of Tamburlaine's wife?
NICK:
What?
ANDREW:
Yeah I know it! But I can't remember it.
SAM:
Alright well there’s this king, you know, way back… and his wife is the most amazing woman in all the word.
NICK:
What does that mean? The most amazing woman in all the world?!
SAM:
Whatever you want it to mean. Your wife's amazing isn't she?
NICK:
Yes!
SAM:
Well then she's your wife.
ANDREW:
Hey my girlfriend's amazing.
SAM:
Well then she's your girlfriend.
ANDREW:
She can't be his wife and my girlfriend.
SAM:
She can, it's allegorical, that's the point. So will I tell the story?
ANDREW:
Sure
NICK:
Go ahead.
SAM:
Right so this king's wife is the most amazing woman in the world. Okay so he decides to build a fabulous palace in her honour and he gets in the best architect there is but before the palace is finished he has to go off to war.
NICK:
Who does?
SAM:
What do you mean who does?
NICK:
The king or the architect?
291
SAM:
The king! Why would the architect go off to war; he's just got the job building the palace. The king goes off to war!
NICK:
Was this a film?
SAM:
No I did it in school. So off he goes, the king; raping and looting and conquering and meanwhile his beautiful wife is hanging out with the architect. And of course the inevitable happens; the architect falls in love with her.
ANDREW:
Why is it inevitable?
NICK:
Because that's the way these stories go.
ANDREW:
No they don't.
NICK:
Yes they do; the outsider blows into town shows up the inadequacies of life, offers an exciting alternative and always gets the girl.
SAM:
Can I tell the story!
NICK:
Keep it coming brother.
SAM:
Right.
ANDREW:
Give me one example.
NICK:
The Milky Bar Kid. Sorry man.
SAM:
Everyday, the architect comes and kneels at the queen's feet and asks her for a kiss and every day she refuses him until one day, out of the blue, she brings out this tray of eggs - all painted you know, all different colours and she says to him; ‘Have an egg’. So he does. Then she says to him to, ‘have another egg’ and he does and he eats a whole bunch and then she asks him; ‘those eggs were all painted differently, what did they taste like?’ And he says; ‘They tasted like eggs’. And so she replies; ‘Well then you can kiss any woman in the court but you can't kiss me’.
ANDREW:
Good for her.
NICK:
But that's not the end of the story.
SAM:
No it's not.
NICK:
We all know where this is going.
ANDREW:
I don't. 293
NICK:
The Milk Tray guy - there's another example!
ANDREW:
What is it with you and chocolate?
SAM:
Okay so the next day the architect comes back to her carrying this tray with three glasses of water on it. He asks her to drink from each of the glasses in turn - so she does; she sips from the first glass, nothing, she sips from the second glass, nothing, she sips from the third glass and immediately she starts to cough and she drops the glass to the floor...
ANDREW:
The bastard poisoned her!
SAM:
No he hadn't poisoned her because once she'd recovered she rushed into his arms and kissed him full on the lips.
NICK:
See.
ANDREW:
Why does she kiss him?
SAM:
(With a flourish) Well, would go back to water once you'd tasted vodka!
NICK:
All because the lady loves... variety.
SAM:
(To Nick) So would you?
NICK:
Would I what?
SAM:
Go back to water once you'd tasted vodka?
NICK:
What do you mean?
SAM:
Well your wife; vodka or water?
NICK:
(Leaving abruptly) Fuck you!
Scene Seventeen Cut to Nina's bookshop. Elizabeth enters with a small suitcase. LIZ:
Nina! Nina enters.
NINA:
Elizabeth. What are you doing here? Is Nick with you?
LIZ:
No. (Beat) Nina listen...
NINA:
Why do you have a suitcase? 295
LIZ:
I'm leaving. (Beat) He sees other women.
NINA:
Ah. (Pause as she digests) I'm sorry I didn't know.
LIZ:
Didn't you?
NINA:
Really Elizabeth, I didn't.
LIZ:
Sometimes he's out all night, did you know that, any port in a storm, and then he comes back to me and I am supposed to accept this… damaged love. Not any more.
NINA:
So you will abandon him.
LIZ:
Is there nothing you won’t dramatise. I thought you might at least understand this.
NINA:
Does he know?
LIZ:
I left him a letter. You can tell him I said goodbye.
NINA:
He loves you Elizabeth.
LIZ:
Yes, but not enough.
NINA:
You think it's my fault don't you? The way he is.
LIZ:
I don’t care any more, but I think you should do him a favour and tell him who his father is.
NINA:
His father is Alex. He knows that.
LIZ:
But who is Alex, Nina? He's a hundred different stories.
NINA:
Well at least stories have an aesthetic, Elizabeth. One can bring charm and brilliance to fiction.
LIZ:
Fiction. (Slowly) Alex was an invention? Nina?!
NINA:
No. Alex was real.
LIZ:
And?
NINA:
And we were very young when we fell in love. I was seventeen and he was... nearly nineteen. We lived just outside Potsdam.
LIZ:
Where…?
NINA:
In East Germany. We were East German and we decided to escape to the West. Pause. Elizabeth 297
is stunned. My wedding night was spent crouched in an enclosed river, one of the so-called vulnerable points in the wall. They couldn't block the flow of water, so they had had to build over it leaving a weir like a letterbox that flowed into the West. They couldn't mine it because it was right under the wall, so instead they posted guards there at all times; two inside a control tower high up on the wall itself and another patrolling outside on a ledge just above the water. Our only chance was when the patrolling guard needed to relieve himself. We had been told he would put down his gun and unzip his fly and that that brief moment was all we had to splash across the shallows from our hiding place and dive into the weir. We were very young, very in love and as you can imagine, very stupid. LIZ:
They caught you.
NINA:
The patrolling officer caught us; he could piss and hold his gun at the same time. But instead of calling out for the others he just aimed his pistol at Alex's head and told me to get up on the ledge beside him; he said if I let him have sex with me he wouldn't kill Alex.
LIZ:
Oh my god.
NINA:
Yes, yes. You see how the truth is so often unpleasant.
LIZ:
Did you...?
NINA:
Did I do it? Of course I did! Wouldn't you? I lay down on the ledge and he fucked me in front of my new husband, then he wished us both good luck and let us go. I don't know why he did that; I think he must have had some warped sense of the barter system.
LIZ:
So you escaped.
NINA:
Yes we escaped. And then two months later I discovered I was pregnant and Alex left me.
LIZ:
Oh Nina.
NINA:
Later he tried to come back but I thought him a despicable coward and I cut him out of my life.
LIZ:
But Nina he was so young, he had to watch....
299
NINA:
Yes, yes, he had to watch it, I had to do it, we could both have been strong for each other but he let me down so I tore him out of my heart and created a better Alex in his image. (Beat.) But I couldn't tear the child out of my womb, in case it was his.
LIZ:
So you never knew who (the father was)...?
NINA:
No, I never knew who Nicholas father was. Do you think I should tell him this truth? Your father is two men; a rapist or a coward. How will that help him? I have looked for the real Alex everywhere. I have tried to find the man I married, the man I loved, Nicholas true father, in so many men. And in the end I have taken the best parts of all of them and created my own Alex. The truth is too ugly Elizabeth.
LIZ:
But he has a right to know.
NINA:
Well thank you for your opinion, my darling, but he's no longer your concern, is he.
LIZ:
I'm sorry we couldn't have been friends Nina, I was never your competition.
She exits. Nina weeps softly. Scene Eighteen Dawn at the beach. Andrew and Sam are sprawled with beer bottles in their hands. SAM:
No, no! Both things are valid. If he was just looking for a cheap thrill, there were plenty more eggs in the sea, that was her point. So then what he had to do was open her eyes to the individuality of his love and say; "I am vodka drink me".
ANDREW:
But you can't go round drunk all the time.
SAM:
That's not the point of the story.
ANDREW:
I mean water may be a little boring, but it's the stuff of life. We can't live without it. I mean you'd get alcohol poisoning if you just drank vodka all the time. She can't live on vodka alone, I mean she knows that. She doesn't even like vodka, she drank some by mistake at Christmas and sneezed for ten minutes and then what did she want? What did she want when she couldn't stop sneezing? Water, then she wanted water! Yeah. So how does it end? 301
SAM:
What?
ANDREW:
The story. The king must have cut the architect's dick off or something?
SAM:
No, it's a happy ending.
ANDREW:
That is a happy ending if you're the king.
SAM:
No, listen. The king comes back, finds out, goes mental and chases the two of them up to this high tower; minaret, whatever, in his fabulous new palace but just when they can't go any further and he's about to grab them; they jump off.
ANDREW:
I thought you said it was happy!
SAM:
But they don't die! Their love is so strong, they grow wings and fly away. It's a happy ending. The twins appear either side of Sam.
TWINS:
A suspension of disbelief.
SAM:
Aye. A leap of faith. I should go it's... Jesus it's six o'clock in the morning. I have to go mate. Listen you take it easy now, okay. He exits.
ANDREW:
(Calling after him) Hey I hope you get to kiss her. (Pause. Andrew stares out to sea). She doesn't even like vodka.
Scene Nineteen Nina's shop. Aline enters. ALINE:
Excuse me. Hi, I wonder if you could help me. I'm looking for a friend of mine. He comes in here quite a lot. Tall guy... em quiet, quite shy... good looking. He has this little lick of hair that he can never do anything with. It's so funny if he's slept on it 'cos it kind of sticks out the side and... (suddenly realising she's gone off on a tangent) His name is Andrew…
NINA:
Oh Andrew. Yes I know Andrew but he hasn't been in this morning. Nick rushes in with an envelope. 303
NICK:
Nina, Elizabeth's gone... He stops abruptly when he sees Aline. They stare at each other.
NICK:
What are you doing here?
NINA:
Nick please, this is a friend of one of my customers.
ALINE:
I have to go. She runs out.
NICK:
(Shouting after her) Did you talk to my wife?!
NINA:
Nick stop it! You don't even know her.
NICK:
She's left me. Elizabeth's left me.
NINA:
I know.
NICK:
What?
NINA:
Sit down. (He sits, dazed) She came here and asked me to tell you goodbye. She said you were...
NICK:
(Holding up letter) Yes I've read this.
NINA:
Well then you know it all. She sits beside him and after a moment takes his empty hand in both hers. He is very upset.
NINA:
Perhaps it's for the best.
NICK:
Why do people always leave us?
NINA:
Because they don't like our imperfections, I suppose.
NICK:
We're selfish, aren't we?
NINA:
Please Nicky, not self-loathing, I can't abide it. We are who we are.
NICK:
I told her the truth because it's what she said she wanted and now she's gone.
NINA:
There, you see. She thinks you failed her but perhaps she failed you. Everybody is flawed, my darling, like poor Achilles, dipped in perfection
305
except for the place where he carried his pain and we all carry pain, my love, all of us. NICK:
But whose pain am I carrying, Nina? Because it can't all be mine. Nick sobs, Nina holds him in her arms.
Scene Twenty Andrew on the beach. Aline enters. She sits down beside him. They watch the sea. He takes her hand and holds it. Low key, a little tearful. ANDREW:
I'm sorry I ran out on you last night.
ALINE:
I looked for you everywhere. Where did you go?
ANDREW:
I don't really remember. I know I was in this bar for a while. God I feel like shit.
ALINE:
Me too. I just... I didn't realise how much I'd miss sex.
ANDREW:
It's okay. I know.
ALINE:
No it's not okay, because I didn't deal with it. I tried to pretend it wasn't important. It was always so easy for us, I just took it for granted.
ANDREW:
We both did.
ALINE:
I love you Andrew.
ANDREW:
I love you too. They kiss.
ALINE:
I used to think my love was all in here (heart), but now I know it's much bigger than that because it's here (she puts his hand to her heart) and here (her head) and here (groin).
ANDREW:
Can we go to bed? I want to be naked with you and hold you and fall asleep with you in my arms. He pulls her up, staggering slightly, she puts her arms round him and they exit. The Twins swan in and drink from the two beer bottles.
TWIN 1:
I think they get it now.
TWIN 2:
They're going to get it now? 307
TWIN 1:
I said I think they get it now.
TWIN 2:
But are they going to get it now?
TWIN 1:
Oh I suppose so!
TWIN 2:
Thank fuck for that. How long has it been?
TWIN 1:
Oh months.
TWIN 2:
Months! They must be gagging for it.
TWIN 1:
And what about you? Exiting.
TWIN 2:
I'm a bit peckish.
TWIN 1:
Me too.
Scene Twenty-One Cut to Andrea. ANDREA:
In folklore of this period desire became demonised in the literal form of Succubae or
Incubi, mischievous demons who took sustenance from the very act of copulation. TWINS:
(Like children playing 'Pattercake') Incubus, Succubus, Animus, Id Keep your libido under a lid. If it escapes it will not be hid Incubus, Succubus, Animus, Id.
ANDREA:
Ultimately, of course, this gave the church access to pronounce on the sexual activities of its parishioners and a control over the marriage bed, that some would argue is still reflected in society today. (Breaking out of lecture mode). Jesus Andrea, you would have slept with him wouldn't you, what were you thinking.
TWIN 2:
I think she's demonising her desire.
TWIN 1:
Definitely demonising it! Andrea sits, tired, her head in her hands.
ANDREA:
How do people meet? How do people meet and have sex and fall in love?
309
TWINS:
It's a leap of faith Andrea. A suspension of disbelief.
TWIN 1:
You don't make an omelette without breaking eggs
TWIN 2:
…and you won't get laid 'til you open your legs. Sam enters, Andrea jumps up.
TWIN 2:
I'm hungry.
TWIN 1:
You're always hungry. They get behind Andrea, trying to push her towards him. She plays the first part of the scene trying to hold her ground.
SAM:
It's all finished.
ANDREA:
Oh good. Thank you. You've done a great job. (Beat) Well, Miriam has your cheque.
SAM:
Right then. Thanks. He exits. The twins shove Andrea after him. He re-enters, they are face to face.
SAM:
I'm sorry, I had to say this before I go. I am attracted to you, I'm not denying it. I'd to go to bed with you at the drop of a hat but... you know the other night... I was asking you out for a drink. A drink would have been fine.
ANDREA:
(Professional, friendly) Look obviously I don't have any moral issues with casual sex or one-night stands or whatever you want to call it. It's really that I just felt it would be... em... inappropriate for us to... have taken it any further.
SAM:
Okay. No, that's fine. I just wanted... well I just wanted to tell you that's all. It was nice meeting you. He goes to leave.
TWINS:
(Shouting at her) Tell him!
ANDREA:
(Shouts) Sam! (He turns) Is it encoded into our DNA, this need? Are we all just vehicles for our reproductive organs?
SAM:
What are you asking me?
311
ANDREA:
I’m asking if love is only a cultural creation to exonerate our base desires?
SAM:
No, I’ll tell you what love is, love is the one true mystery.
ANDREA:
And sex?
SAM:
Come on. Sex is the icing on the cake!
ANDREA:
Kiss me?
SAM:
Okay. He pulls her into a passionate clinch.
Scene Twenty-Two The beach. Andrew is laying with his head in Aline's lap reading. She is stroking his hair. ANDREW:
(Out) Time had slowed right down to the lapping of the waves on the shore. We were in love and it was....
ALINE:
...perfect.
The sound of waves fades up as lights fade down on Andrew and Aline. Andrea and Sam are silhouetted in a tableaux, Andrea on top of a table facing down and Sam underneath facing up, (i.e. a non-graphic image of love-making). The sounds of the beach mix with the taped sound of lovemaking. The volume increases until finally the twins; each holding up a knife and fork and wearing a bib, (preferably in a tight chest to head spotlight), indicate cut by flicking their knives across their throats. Immediately the lights and sound cut out. The End Outtro Leonard Cohen's "I'm You're Man"
313
Emer’s Health A Monologue
This monologue was originally commissioned by the Irish Institute of Public Health for their 2006 conference. It was performed by Geraldine Plunkett and directed by Tara Derrington. Emer’s Health runs at approximately twenty-five minutes. It is a comedy monologue about health issues delivered from the point of view of Emer Fitzwilliam, a woman with more money than sense, who has recently become aware of some of the harsher truths of life. The piece is suitable for an actress in her fifties or early sixties with good comedic and dramatic skills. It is set in Dublin.
315
The set consists of a chair and table, as if in a hotel bar. Emer enters. She is holding an envelope and carrying a gin and tonic and her handbag. She plonks the handbag down beside her and sits down. She looks around at the audience, as if checking out the room, and waves to a couple of people. Her phone rings. She takes it out of her bag and stares at it with concern, finally deciding to answer it. She instantly becomes breezy and good-humoured. EMER: (On the phone) Siofra? Yes, sorry love the phone was hiding in my bag; it’s like it grows little hands and grabs hold of the lining. No, no I’m fine darling, yeah. I was at the beauticians. No, just a massage, I’m waiting for a taxi… yeah in the rank. No I’m on great form, anyway here comes one now. I’ll see you later darling. Ciao, ciao sweetheart. She hangs up and addresses the audience directly. I know, I’m a shameful liar, but she’d only start quoting statistics at me. I was at the beauticians yesterday. I didn’t have the massage though… I had the colonic. Colonic irrigation. Have you had one? They’re amazing. I don’t care what anyone says, if you can afford it, do it. Seriously. My therapist, Jill, she always says, ‘a flushed bowel is a happy bowel’. I couldn’t agree more. She’s going to book me in once a month from now on… well it’s important to have a routine, isn’t it. I was over the road at the doctors today. I promised myself a G and T afterwards. A little treat helps you through, that’s my motto. Just a
check-up, you know, nothing serious, but you need something after all that poking and prodding don’t you. ‘Open your eyes wide Emer. stick out your tongue Emer’. I tell you after all that I felt like one of the All Blacks. Still it’s important, you have to do it. I mean when you get to my age it’s a minefield; if you’re not having hot-flushes, you’re getting breast cancer or osteoporosis. That’s why I’ve been necking full-fat milk and yam extract for the last ten years. Can you imagine? You’re out somewhere, like at the horse show, and next thing your legs snap off and you crumble into a pile of dust… No things are never that dramatic are they. Just painful and awkward and ongoing. Well touch wood (she touches the table) apart from a little stiffness in the joints I’m okay. She takes a big sip of her drink. Oh just what the doctor ordered. Siofra, that’s my daughter, she thinks people drinking alone are sad, particularly women, particularly women my age. I said, ‘don’t be so sexist’. She said, ‘mother’, she always calls me mother when she’s annoyed, ‘mother, alcohol abuse is a growing problem in women in Ireland’. I said, ‘if you find a naggin in my bag then you can start worrying’. I didn’t tell Siofra I was going to the doctors, she’s a habit of jumping to conclusions. She’s a lovely girl but she’s gone a bit extreme recently. I suppose you can’t blame her what with everything’s that happened. She came to the chiropodist with me last week and gave the poor woman the third degree; ‘what is your diagnosis based on? Can we check this information in a book?’ I said, ‘Siofra it’s a verucca, let the woman work’. 317
Emer is mildy distracted. She looks at the envelope. She reads the address on the front, then goes to open it but changes her mind. I like it in here, it’s very relaxed isn’t it. I came in the other day actually, well in all fairness I had to. I had a run-in, an argument on the street, with a child, can you imagine. I needed a drink after that. I only shouted over to him in the first place because he was the spitting image of my son, Ricky, Richard junior. You know from the back; exact same height, same colouring everything. I just called out in that instinctive way you do, without stopping to think, ‘it can’t be Ricky, he’s at rugby practice’. Well he turned around and poked his finger at me (she indicates giving the finger). Sorry, no offense. It was such a relief when it wasn’t him. It was a beggar, you know one of those kids, their parents put them up to it don’t they? Or maybe he was a runaway, or a traveller. I mean I do feel sorry for them but it’s not as if they’re particularly polite. You’d think they’d be a bit more charming wouldn’t you? I mean they want you to give them something and then they all have the big surly faces on them. Anyway I couldn’t change direction so I had to go right past him and the next thing, he says to me bold as brass; ‘here lady, you’re rolling in it? Give us five euro’, I said, ‘excuse me young man, what makes you think I’m any better off than you?’ Well you know spiritually speaking, and the next thing I’m in the middle of a shouting match with a dirty thirteen year old. It was embarrassing more than anything else. He says to me, ‘Eff off you old c-word.’ (To audience outraged) Yeah. ‘Give us some money or take your stuck-up, botoxy face out of my effing business and eff off’. I mean can you imagine how I felt? I’ve never had botox in my life.
She sips her drink thoughtfully. A gard came along then and he ran off. I must have seemed upset because the gard said, ‘don’t worry he’ll be be dead before he’s thirty’, I can’t say it cheered me up. Your man says to me, ‘the runaways are the worst, once they go feral it’s hard to put manners on them’. I said to Richard junior later, ‘you wouldn’t ever run away from home would you?’ And he said, ‘no mum, not as long as I’ve got my x-box and you’re paying for my karate lessons’, which was a relief. She looks at the envelope absent-mindedly. It’s healthy to make a little time for yourself isn’t it? Particularly if you’re feeling stressed. When I think of Richard senior, my husband, having to commute like that after all those years. I said, ‘take the early retirement Richard’, but would he? Not at all. So there he is an hour and a half in traffic morning and evening. They moved his office, out of town – he barely had any time for a round of golf in the week - it’s all about overheads and margins these days. He’d walk in the door, I’d say, ‘hello stranger’ and he’d say, ‘Emer I’m not in the mood’. You might not get a civil word out of him all evening… That’s why you have to make time for yourself. You have to ‘ring-fence stress’. Yeah, I got that off the internet. It popped up on one of those little windows, it was as if someone was speaking to me directly. God… or some marketing fella. Well otherwise things might just overwhelm you... 319
Like getting a new cleaner for instance. What an absolute nightmare that was. I had one girl there for a while, Ukrainian or something. She used to flinch whenever I went near her. I’d walk through the kitchen, next thing she’d be cowering in a corner. God knows what happened to her, but she had to go, every time I turned around there’d be another piece of John Rocha on the floor in pieces. Then there was the Korean girl who sold all of the ornamental goldfish out of our pond – don’t ask me what that was about. I finally got a normal one there a few weeks ago. Well I mean she isn’t bad, but when she started I caught her using bleach with her bare hands, I mean you don’t want to have to babysit the cleaner do you. I said to her, ‘noey bleachy on handies’, she’s from China. When I showed her the rubber gloves you’d have thought all her Christmases had come at once. You see my regular cleaner got sick. Emphysema. It flared up again. Ten years she’s worked for me, Breda. Ten years, four houses, three flare-ups, her Joe dead at forty six and still she never missed a day, until now. It’s desperate how dependent you get, isn’t it. That’s how come I went over there the first time, to the house, when Breda didn’t turn up. I mean I knew something was wrong. It’s funny, I’d never been over there before… to Breda’s I mean, not the Northside. No, Howth is one of my favourite places. I only had the address because I always send a Christmas card - I think it’s nicer to post them isn’t it? Classier, and then one of the neighbours showed me where she lived, which was very kind I thought, not what I expected at all. Poor Breda, she’s a martyr to the
emphysema, she always says she got it in a paint factory in Slough way back when, yeah she blames the Brits, but to be honest I think it’s more likely the forty fags a day, do you know what I mean? Anyway as soon as I got in the door I took one look at her and I said, ‘Breda you are not well’. She said, ‘I know, I’ve been up the A and E all night, I’m only just home. What the eff are you doing here Emer?’ She’s not one to mince her words, Breda. ‘Who’s here with you?’ I said. She said, ‘Beyonce’… That’s her granddaughter. She’s only six. She had a dress-up nurse’s outfit on, bless, a little pretendy thermometer in one pocket and all Breda’s medication in the other. I think she was pleased to have something to do, she’s been off school for ages. Yeah, apparently they found asbestos in one of the portacabins. Oh you can be sure I rang Blackrock college as soon as I heard that. I said to the headmaster, ‘have you checked for asbestos’, he said, ‘Mrs. Fitzwilliam I assure you our school is a toxin-free zone’, of course while he had me on, he tapped me for a donation to the new yoga studio. Never misses a trick that man. Well I just took one look at that house and I knew Breda wasn’t herself. Dishes stacked up in the kitchen, brimming ashtrays, copies of ‘TV Now’ everywhere. ‘That’s it’, I said and I took a deep breath, popped on a pair of marigolds and I gave all the surfaces a once over. Well I tell you, it cheered Breda up if nothing else, I’ve never seen her laugh so much. ‘Emer’, she said, ‘you should take over my cleaning round, you’re a natural’. We roared! Well until Breda went red and couldn’t breathe, then she had to take a tablet and stand in the yard for half an hour. She was grand, you know, 321
once the attack had subsided, I poured us a nice cup of tea and Beyonce slipped out and buried her fags in the park. It’s busy in here today isn’t it? Maybe there’s a conference on or something. All that team-building mullarkey. Making canoes out of wavin pipe, that sort of thing. Richard did all that. Oh yeah. It’s great. Well until the next day when you’re back in the traffic wishing you had a piece of wavin pipe to stove your own brains in with. Anyway, I decided Breda was going to need some help. Charity starts at home, I said to myself, and Breda has been cleaning my home for ten years. I mean I’m constantly eating lunch for charity and I never get to see the results so I thought ‘come on Emer, make a difference’. But then of course Breda doesn’t want to be helped. ‘I don’t want an effing hand out’, she says to me. In the end I thought, ‘sod it’ and I sent Mae Ling over there. Breda was furious. I hadn’t realised there’d be a whole professional jealousy thing, you know another cleaner in the house, but I said, ‘deal with it Breda’ and then Beyonce decided Mae Ling was only fabulous so it’s all smoothed over now. Yeah, it’s worked out very well, Beyonce’s learning Mandarin and I think Breda’s giving Mae Ling a few pointers vis a vis the cleaning. Yeah, you can tell, she’s started doing the grouting in our bathrooms with a toothbrush. It’s that kind of attention to detail that gets you out of the minimum wage bracket I’m telling you. She looks at the envelope, but doesn’t open it.
I should open this I suppose… I always think letters are so perfect when they’re laying there on the mat. All nice and neat and official. I mean they could be anything; a prize, a Valentine’s card… an invitation… to a party… at Aras an Uachtarain. Then you open them and of course it’s all bills and shiny leaflets. I thought we were going to fall out again there the other day, me and Breda. I wanted to get onto the Council about the black mold in her kitchen, I mean it’s disgraceful. I said, ‘I’ll just give them a ring’. but she says to me, ‘I’m not an effing project Emer’. I said, ‘don’t be like that, I need to keep busy’. She said, ‘you’re doing my effing head in. Sit down and have an effing cup of tea’. I said, ‘effing alright then’. Well we both laughed and then I had a little cry. Breda’s great in a crisis, nothing rattles her. Well I mean she’s been through it all herself, not to mention the trouble with her Kylie, Beyonce’s mother. (Sotto voce) She’s in prison, Kylie, twenty eight counts of shoplifting. I said to Breda, ‘is it an addiction’, she said, ‘no, it’s more of a small business’, apparently she was taking orders. You know, you see a nice pair of cullottes in BTs and then Kylie goes in and robs them for you. ‘The spirit of free enterprise’, I said. I was being a bit sarcastic I suppose. ‘Yes’, she says, ‘Just like your Richard only on a smaller scale’. I let it pass. I mean I didn’t really know what she was getting at, Richard was a corporate lawyer. Anyway every cloud has a silver lining, Kylie’s doing two to four and studying for her leaving cert. Breda’s very proud. You know the Council offered Breda a three-bed semi with garden out in the ‘burbs but she turned them down. I said, ‘Are you mad Breda, you’ve black mold and a yard no bigger than a ping-pong 323
table’. She said, ‘I’m not moving out there Emer, the place has no soul’. I do know what she means though. I said, ‘I suppose it’s all shopping malls and dual carraige-ways is it? She said, ‘Sure if I wanted to be forced onto the edge of a major road network Emer, wouldn’t I become a Traveller’. Very dark sense of humour Breda… Anyway she’s lovely neighbours where she is and a Dubliners tribute band play in her local every Sunday – wouldn’t be my cup of tea but Breda loves it. I took Siofra round the other day, she wanted to try and help out. She’s very into all that, volunteered in the third world in her year off. She got a bit of shock though, I think she was expecting a Bangladeshi slum but Breda’s place is quite nice, she has dado rails and everything, yeah she’s lovely taste for a Northsider. Mind you Siofra did agree that the mold had to be sorted. Breda said, ‘Lookit, I know the fella in the Council, he’s told me I’m on a list, they’ll get to me as soon as they can’. Siofra said, ‘you have a serious illness Mrs. O’Doherty’, she’s lovely manners my daughter. Next thing she’s on to environmental health and the Council have a man round like that (clicks her fingers). I think Breda was impressed in spite of herself, she said to me, ‘Jeysus, it’s not who you know any more is it, it’s what you know’. I said, ‘that’s very true’… She takes a long drink. But then it is who you know sometimes isn’t it. I mean our consultant managed to get Richard in on one of those clinical trials, pulled a few strings, him and Richard go way back. I didn’t mention
that to Breda, didn’t see the point. I mean her Joe died of a heart attack, different kettle of fish altogether. Yeah, very sad. He fell off a scaffolding at work… and then his heart gave out on the way down. Terrible accident. Breda always says, ‘where were his bloody pigeons when he needed them’. He was a fancier that’s the word isn’t it. She still has all his trophies, in her cabinet. I don’t know what she was expecting – that they’d swoop down and save him perhaps. Still you can’t blame her for having the bitter moment can you. She holds the envelope for a moment and then gently opens it. She takes out the bill inside and reads it. Date of service invoiced… God that’s only two months ago. Mad isn’t it. Time’s either flying or it’s dragging or have you noticed the way it can do both at once sometimes. I’ve noticed that, you’re standing there, watching yourself rush round the place. She nods to herself as if agreeing with the bill. Well that all seems to be correct. Mahogany casket, brass fittings. I think Richard would have liked it. It was very statesman-like. We put his favourite putter and one of his drivers in with him. I wanted to give him the full fourteen and the bag… but we couldn’t get the lid down. Breda said after Joe went she kept seeing him, out of the corner of her eye. We never really talked about it at the time. She said, ‘Emer I still buy his favourite biscuits sometimes and twenty John Player Blue’. I know what she means; I don’t think it’s really hit me about
325
Richard yet. I keep expecting him to come home. Like he’s just been away on business or something. Breda said to me this morning, ‘you never get over it you just get used to it’. I said, ‘I don’t want to get used to it, I just want him back’. She said, ‘let it all out’. Well Beyonce was down at the Asia market with Mae Ling, so I thought, ‘eff it’ and the next thing I’m howling like a banshee. She said, ‘Emer, women are better at looking after themselves, that’s all’. I didn’t contradict her, I mean fair play she has given up the fags. Anyway she says to me, ‘get it out of your system, you don’t want to bottle it up. It’ll rot you from the inside’. I suppose she’s right. (Angry/upset) I mean for heaven’s sake, you’d only want to breathe on Richard’s beamer and he’d have it in the garage, but get him to go for a check-up, oh no. They told me he might have lived if they’d caught it sooner. The doctor said he must have known something was wrong. I remember saying to him, ‘did you not feel it?’ He just said, ‘sorry love, I didn’t think it was anything important’. Men, what can you do. Joe was the same apparently - phobic about doctors – not that they could have helped him either. She folds the bill and puts it in her bag. Well there’s no going back is there, not once you get the bill. That’s it, it’s final. I suppose I’d better get on and pack all his clothes up now. It’s silly how you hang on isn’t it. I just can’t bear the idea of that wardrobe being empty. I’ve got to stop forgetting he’s gone; I
keep calling out his name. I’m terrible for that. ‘Richard your programme’s on’ and then… well nothing. Beyonce made me a card the other day… she asked Breda why I was a sad lady so Breda told her my husband had died and she drew me a lovely picture. It was a coffin with little wings. She’d put a lot of work into you could tell, there was glitter everywhere, three different colours and the coffin was sort of smiling and waving. She’d written, ‘don’t be sad’… in Chinese. Siofra said it was the best card we’d had, and then Ricky came in and kicked the sofa and said he wanted to shave his head and get a tattoo. I just said, ‘no pet you’re grieving, have a chocolate milkshake’, and then we all went bowling. She’s right Breda, you do have to get it out of your system. It’s a great leveller, isn’t it, death? It stops you in your tracks and makes you wonder about things. Like the other night I was just laying there, wide awake and I started to think about little Beyonce and Richard Junior and wondering what their lives would be like. You know if they’d be happy and healthy and long-lived. Well that’s all any of us want isn’t it? Her phone rings and she answers it. Siofra. No pet I got a bit side-tracked. Yeah. No I was just in BTs looking at the culottes, yeah you know me, lost track of the time. Yes pet I’m on my way now. (She starts to exit.) No love they’re very pricey, I think I’ll wait for the sale. Yeah, okay I’ll see you at home. Yes I’m on my way now. Love you too darling. Bye, bye. 327
The End
329