DORIS LESSING
Play with a Tiger and Other Plays

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Play With a Tiger

About Play With a Tiger

Author’s Notes on Directing this Play

Characters

Act One

Act Two

Act Three

The Singing Door

Characters

The Singing Door

Each His Own Wilderness

About Each His Own Wilderness

Characters

Act One

Act Two

About the Author

Author’s Note

Also by the Author

Read On

The Grass is Singing

The Golden Notebook

The Good Terrorist

Love, Again

The Fifth Child

Copyright

About the Publisher

PLAY WITH A TIGER

This play was first produced at the Comedy Theatre, London, on 22 March 1962, by Oscar Lewenstein, with the following cast:

ANNA FREEMAN | Siobhan McKenna
TOM LATTIMER | William Russell
MARY JACKSON | Maureen Pryor
HARRY PAINE | Godfrey Quigley
JANET STEVENS | Anne Lawson
DAVE MILLER | Alex Viespi

Directed by Ted Kotcheff

The action takes place in Anna Freeman’s room on the first floor of Mary Jackson’s house in Earls Court, London, SW5

At the opening of the play the time is about nine in the evening; at its close it is about four in the morning

Author’s Notes on Directing this Play

When I wrote Play with a Tiger in 1958 I set myself an artistic problem which resulted from my decision that naturalism, or, if you like, realism, is the greatest enemy of the theatre; and that I never wanted to write a naturalistic play again.

Now this play is about the rootless, declassed people who live in bed-sitting-rooms or small flats or the cheaper hotel rooms, and such people are usually presented on the stage in a detailed squalor of realism which to my mind distracts attention from what is interesting about them.

I wrote Play with a Tiger with an apparently conventional opening designed to make the audience expect a naturalistic play so that when the walls vanished towards the end of Act One they would be surprised (and I hope pleasantly shocked) to find they were not going to see this kind of play at all.

But there had to be a bridge between the opening of the play, and the long section where Anna and Dave are alone on the stage, and this bridge is one of style. This is why Anna’s room is tall, bare, formal; why it has practically no furniture, save for the bed and the small clutter around it; and why there are no soft chairs or settees where the actors might lounge or sprawl. This stark set forces a certain formality of movement, stance and confrontation so that even when Dave and Anna are not alone on the stage creating their private world, there is a simplicity of style which links the two moods of the play together.

It is my intention that when the curtain comes down at the end, the audience will think: Of course! In this play no one lit cigarettes, drank tea or coffee, read newspapers, squirted soda into Scotch, or indulged in little bits of ‘business’ which indicated ‘character’. They will realize, I hope, that they have been seeing a play which relies upon its style and its language for its effect.

DORIS LESSING

CHARACTERS

ANNA FREEMAN: A woman of thirty-five, or so, who earns her living on the artistic fringes.

DAVE MILLER: An American, about thirty-three, who is rootless on principle.

MARY JACKSON: About ten years older than Anna: a widow with a grown-up son.

TOM LATTIMER: Who is on the point of taking a job as business manager of a woman’s magazine. About thirty-five, a middle-class Englishman.

HARRY PAINE: Fifty-ish. A journalist.

JANET STEVENS: In her early twenties, the daughter of an insurance agent – American.

Act One

The action of this play takes place in ANNA FREEMAN’S room on the first floor of MARY JACKSON’S house, on a street in London with heavy traffic. ANNA has lived here for some years. There is another room, behind this one, used by her son, now at school; but ANNA sleeps and lives in this room. It is very large and looks formal because it is underfurnished. There are double doors at left-back. When they are open the landing can be seen, and part of the stairway leading up. The house was originally built for rich people and still shows signs of it. The landing and stairs are spacious and carpeted in dark red; the banisters are elegant and painted white. The upper part of the doors are of glass, and therefore the doorway has a dark red curtain, usually drawn back. The room is painted white, walls and ceilings. There is a low wide divan, covered in rough black material, in the right back corner; a window, with dark red curtains, in the right wall; a large, round, ornate mirror, on the left wall; a low shelf of books under the window. The floor is painted black and has in the centre of it a round crimson carpet. There are two stiff-looking chairs on either side of the mirror, of dark wood, and seated in dark red. The life of the room is concentrated around the divan. A low table by its head has a telephone, and is loaded with books and papers, and a small reading light. At the foot of the divan is another low table, with a typewriter, at which ANNA works by kneeling, or squatting, on the divan. This table has another reading light, and a record player. Around the divan is a surf of books, magazines, newspapers, records, cushions. There is a built-in cupboard, hardly noticeable until opened, in the right wall. Two paraffin heaters, of the cheap black cylindrical kind, are both lit. It is winter. The year is 1958. At the opening of the play the time is about nine in the evening, at its close it is four in the morning.

[ANNA is standing at the window, which is open at the top, her back to the room. She is wearing slacks and a sweater: these are pretty, even fashionable; the reason for the trousers is that it is hard to play Act II in a skirt.]

[TOM is standing behind ANNA, waiting, extremely exasperated. This scene between them has been going on for some time. They are both tense, irritated, miserable.]

[TOM’S sarcasm and pomposity are his way of protecting himself from his hurt at how he has been treated.]

[ANNA’S apparent casualness is how she wards off a hysteria that is only just under control. She is guilty about TOM, unhappy about DAVE – and this tension in her underlies everything she says or does until that moment towards the end of Act One when DAVE, because of his moral ascendancy over her, forces her to relax and smile.]

[A moment’s silence. Then a scream and a roar of traffic, which sounds as if it is almost in the room. TOM loses patience, goes past ANNA to window, slams it shut, loudly.]

TOM: Now say: ‘I could repeat every word you’ve said.’

ANNA [in quotes]: I’ve scarcely seen you during the last two weeks. You always have some excuse. Mary answers the telephone and says you are out. I was under the impression we were going to be married. If I’m wrong please correct me. I simply cannot account for the change in your attitude … how’s that?

[TOM looks at her, gives her a small sardonic bow, goes past her to a chair which is set so he is facing half away from her. He sits in it in a pose which he has clearly been occupying previously – for ANNA looks at him, equally sardonic. Since the chair is hard and upright, not designed for comfort, he is almost lying in a straight line from his crossed ankles to his chin, which is upturned because he is looking with weary patience at the ceiling. His fingertips are held lightly together.]

[ANNA, having registered the fact that his pose is designed to annoy, goes back to the window and stands looking down.]

ANNA: That man is still down there. Do you know, he comes every night and just stands there, hour after hour after hour. And it’s so cold.

TOM: Yes, it is … Anna, I was under the impression that my attraction for you, such as it is, of course, was that I’m rather more reliable, more responsible? than the usual run of your friends?

ANNA: Do you realize that man hasn’t so much as moved a muscle since he arrived at six? There he stands, gazing up at that window. And the top half of that house is a brothel. He must have seen one of the girls in the street and fallen in love. Imagine it, I’ve been living here all these years and I never knew that house was a brothel. There are four Lesbians living together, and that poor sap’s in love with one of them. Well, isn’t it frightening?

TOM: When you walked into my flat that evening – if I may remind you of it – you said you were in search of a nice solid shoulder to weep on. You said you couldn’t stand another minute of living like this. Well?

ANNA: I asked the policeman at the corner. Why yes, miss, he said, all fatherly and protective, they’ve been there for years and years. But don’t you worry your pretty little head about a thing, we have our eyes on them all the time.

TOM: I suppose what all this amounts to is that your fascinating American is around again.

ANNA: I told you, no. I haven’t seen Dave for weeks. Perhaps I should go down and tell that poor moonstruck idiot – look, you poor sap, all you’ve got to do is to go upstairs with fifty shillings in your hand and your goddess is yours?

TOM: And while you’re about it, you could take him off for a nice cup of tea, listen to his troubles and tell him yours.

ANNA: Yes I could. Why not?

TOM: You’re going to go on like this I suppose until the next time. Dave or some similarly fascinating character plays you up and you decide that good old Tom will do for a month or so?

ANNA: Tom, it’s nine-fifteen. You’re expected at the Jeffries at nine-thirty.

TOM: I did accept for you too.

ANNA: Yes you did, and you didn’t even ask me first.

TOM: I see.

ANNA: No, you don’t see. Tom, until two weeks ago you said you couldn’t stand either of the Jeffries, you said, quote, they were boring, phoney and stupid. But now he’s going to be your boss it’s different?

TOM: No, they’re still boring, phoney and stupid, but he is going to be my boss.

ANNA: You said if you took Jeffries’ job, you’d be in the rat-race, stuck in the rut, and bound hand and foot to the grindstone.

TOM: I finally took that job because we were going to be married – so I thought.

ANNA: But now we’re not going to be married you’ll turn down the job? [as he does not reply] I thought not. So don’t use me to justify yourself.

TOM: You really do rub things in, Anna. All right then. For a number of years I’ve been seeing myself as a sort of a rolling stone, a fascinating free-lance, a man of infinite possibilities. It turns out that I’m just another good middle-class citizen after all – I’m comfort-loving, conventionally unconventional, I’m not even the Don Juan I thought I was. It turns out that I’m everything I dislike most. I owe this salutary discovery to you, Anna. Thank you very much.

ANNA: Oh, not at all.

TOM [he now gets up from the chair, and faces her, attacking hard]: Oh my God, you stupid little romantic. Yes, that’s what you are, and a prig into the bargain. Very pleased with yourself because you won’t soil your hands. Writing a little review here, a little article there, an odd poem or two, a reflection on the aspect of a sidelight on the back-wash of some bloody movement or other – reading tuppenny-halfpenny novels for publishers’ Mr Bloody Black’s new book is or is not an advance on his last. Well, Anna, is it really worth it?

ANNA: Yes it is. I’m free to live as I like. You won’t be, ever again.

TOM: And worrying all the time how you’re going to find the money for what your kid wants. Do you think he’s going to thank you for living like this?

ANNA: That’s right. Always stick the knife in, as hard as you can, into a person’s weakest spot.

TOM: An art you are not exactly a stranger to? You live here, hand to mouth, never knowing what’s going to happen next, surrounding yourself with bums and neurotics and failures. As far as you’re concerned anyone who has succeeded at anything at all is corrupt. [She says nothing.] Nothing to say, Anna? That’s not like you.

ANNA: I was thinking, not for the first time, unfortunately, how sad it is that the exquisite understanding and intimacy of the bed doesn’t last into the cold light of day.

TOM: So that’s all we had in common. Thank you Anna, you’ve now defined me.

ANNA: All right, all right, all right. I’m sorry. What else can I say – I’m sorry.

[There is a knock on the door.]

ANNA: Come in.

TOM: Oh my God, Mary.

MARY [outside the door]: Pussy, pussy, pussy.

[A knock on the door.]

ANNA: Come in.

TOM: She’s getting very deaf, isn’t she?

ANNA: She doesn’t know it. [as the door opens] For the Lord’s sake don’t say … [she imitates him] … I was under the impression we had said come in, if I’m wrong please correct me.

TOM: Just because you’ve decided to give me the boot, there’s no need to knock me down and start jumping on me.

[MARY comes in, backwards, shutting the door to keep the cat out.]

MARY: No pussy, you stay there. Anna doesn’t really like you, although she pretends she does. [to ANNA] That cat is more like a dog, really, he comes when I call. And he waits for me outside a door. [peeping around the edge of the door] No, puss, wait. I won’t be a minute. [to ANNA] I don’t know why I bothered to christen that cat Methuselah, it never gets called anything but puss. [sprightly with an exaggerated sigh] Really, I’m getting quite an old maid, fussing over a cat … If you can call a widow with a grown up son an old maid, but who’d have believed I’d have come to fussing over a cat. [seeing TOM] Oh, I didn’t know you were here.

TOM: Didn’t you see me? I said hullo.

MARY: Sometimes I think I’m getting a bit deaf. Well, what a surprise. You’re quite a stranger, aren’t you?

TOM: Hardly a stranger, I should have said.

MARY: Dropped in for old times’ sake [TOM is annoyed. MARY says to ANNA] I thought we might go out to the pub. I’m sick of sitting and brooding. [as ANNA does not respond – quick and defensive] Oh I see, you and Tom are going out, two’s company and three’s none.

ANNA: Tom’s going to the Jeffries.

MARY [derisive]: Not the Jeffries – you must be hard up for somewhere to go.

ANNA: And I think I’ll stay and work.

TOM: Anna is too good for the Jeffries.

MARY: Who isn’t?

[ANNA has gone back to the window, is looking down into the street.]

TOM [angrily]: Perhaps you’d like to come with me, since Anna won’t.

MARY [half aggressive, half coy]: You and me going out together – that’d be a change. Oh, I see, you’re joking. [genuinely] Besides, they really are so awful.

TOM: Better than going to the pub with Methuselah, perhaps?

MARY: [with spirit]: No, I prefer Methuselah. You don’t want to bore yourself at the Jeffries. Stay and have some coffee with us.

ANNA [her back still turned]: It’s the Royal Command.

MARY: Oh. You mean you’ve taken that job after all? I told Anna you would, months ago. There, Anna, I told you he would. Anna said when it actually came to the point, you’d never bring yourself to do it.

TOM: I like the idea of you and Anna laying bets as to whether the forces of good or evil would claim my soul.

MARY: Well, I mean, that’s what it amounts to, doesn’t it? But I always said Anna was wrong about you. Didn’t I, Anna? Anna always does this. [awkwardly] I mean, it’s not the first time, I mean to say. And I’ve always been right. Ah, well, as Anna says, don’t you, Anna, if a man marries, he marries a woman, but if a woman marries, she marries a way of life.

TOM: Strange, but as it happens I too have been the lucky recipient of that little aphorism.

MARY: Well, you were bound to be, weren’t you? [she sees TOM is furious and stops] Harry telephoned you, Anna.

ANNA: What for?

MARY: Well, I suppose now you’re free he thinks he’ll have another try.

TOM: May I ask – how did he know Anna was free? After all, I didn’t.

MARY: Oh, don’t be silly. I mean, you and Anna might not have known, but it was quite obvious to everyone else … well, I met Harry in the street some days ago, and he said …

TOM: I see.

MARY: Well, there’s no need to be so stuffy about it Tom –

[A bell rings downstairs.]

MARY: Was that the bell? Are you expecting someone, Anna?

TOM: Of course she’s expecting someone.

ANNA: No.

MARY [who hasn’t heard]: Who are you expecting?

ANNA: Nobody.

MARY: Well, I’ll go for you, I have to go down anyway. Are you in or out, Anna?

ANNA: I’m out.

MARY: It’s often difficult to say, whether you are in or out, because after all, one never knows who it might be.

ANNA [patiently]: Mary, I really don’t mind answering my bell you know.

MARY [hastily going to the door]: Sometimes I’m running up and down the stairs half the day, answering Anna’s bell. [as she goes out and shuts the door] Pussy, pussy, where are you puss, puss, puss.

TOM: She’s deteriorating fast, isn’t she? [ANNA patiently says nothing] That’s what you’re going to be like in ten years’ time if you’re not careful.

ANNA: I’d rather be like Mary in ten years’ time than what you’re going to be like when you’re all settled down and respectable.

TOM: A self-pitying old bore.

ANNA: She is also a kind warm-hearted woman with endless time for people in trouble … Tom, you’re late, the boss waits, and you can’t afford to offend him.

TOM: I remember Mary, and not so long ago either – she was quite a dish, wasn’t she? If I were you I’d be scared stiff.

ANNA: Sometimes I am scared stiff. [seriously] Tom, her son’s getting married next week.

TOM: Oh, so that’s it.

ANNA: No, that’s not it. She’s very pleased he’s getting married.

And she’s given them half the money she’s saved – not that there’s much of it. You surely must see it’s going to make quite a difference to her, her son getting married?

TOM: Well he was bound to get married some time.

ANNA: Yes he was bound to get married, time marches on, every dog must have its day, one generation makes way for another, today’s kittens are tomorrow’s cats, life’s like that.

TOM: I don’t know why it is, most people think I’m quite a harmless sort of man. After ten minutes with you I feel I ought to crawl into the nearest worm-hole and die.

ANNA: We’re just conforming to the well-known rule that when an affair ends, the amount of violence and unpleasantness is in direct ratio to its heat.

[Loud laughter and voices outside – HARRY and MARY.]

TOM: I thought you said you were out. Mary really is quite impossible.

ANNA: It’s Harry who’s impossible. He always takes it for granted one doesn’t mean him.

TOM [angry]: And perhaps one doesn’t.

ANNA: Perhaps one doesn’t.

TOM: Anna! Do let’s try and be a bit more …

ANNA: Civilized? Is that the word you’re looking for?

[HARRY and MARY come in.]

HARRY [as he kisses ANNA]: Civilized, she says. There’s our Anna. I knew I’d come in and she’d be saying civilized. [coolly, to TOM] Oh, hullo.

TOM [coolly]: Well, Harry.

MARY [who has been flirted by HARRY into an over-responsive state]:

Oh, Harry, you are funny sometimes. [she laughs] It’s not what you say, when you come to think of it, it’s the way you say it.

HARRY: Surely, it’s what I say as well?

ANNA: Harry, I’m not in. I told Mary, I don’t want to see anybody.

HARRY: Don’t be silly, darling, of course you do. You don’t want to see anybody, but you want to see me.

TOM [huffy]: Anna and I were talking.

HARRY: Of course you are, you clots. And it’s high time you stopped. Look at you both. And now we should all have a drink.

TOM: Oh damn. You and Mary go and have a drink.

HARRY: That’s not the way at all. Anna will come to the pub with me and weep on my shoulder, and Tom will stay and weep on Mary’s.

TOM [rallying into his smooth sarcasm]: Harry, I yield to no one in my admiration of your tact but I really must say …

HARRY: Don’t be silly. I got a clear picture from Mary here, of you and Anna, snarling and snapping on the verge of tears – it doesn’t do at all. When a thing’s finished it’s finished. I know, for my sins I’m an expert.

TOM: Forgive me if I make an over-obvious point, but this really isn’t one of the delightful little affairs you specialize in.

HARRY: Of course it was. You two really aren’t in a position to judge. Now if you weren’t Tom and Anna, you’d take one look at yourselves and laugh your heads off at the idea of your getting married.

ANNA [she goes to the window and looks down]: Harry, come and see me next week and I’ll probably laugh my head off.

HARRY: Next week’s no good at all. You won’t need me then, you’ll have recovered.

TOM [immensely sarcastic]: Surely, Harry, if Anna asks you to leave her flat, the least you can do is to … [ANNA suddenly giggles.]

HARRY: There, you see? How could you possibly marry such a pompous idiot, Anna. [to TOM, affectionately] Anna can’t possibly marry such an idiot, Tom. Anna doesn’t like well-ordered citizens, like you, anyway.

MARY: I don’t know how you can say well-ordered. He was just another lame duck until now.

HARRY: But he’s not a lame duck any more. He’s going to work for Jeffries, and he’ll be administering to the spiritual needs of the women of the nation through the ‘Ladies Own.’

TOM: I’m only going to be on the business side. I won’t be responsible for the rubbish they – [He stops, annoyed with himself. HARRY and MARY laugh at him.]

HARRY: There you are, he’s a solid respectable citizen already.

TOM [to HARRY]: It’s not any worse than the rag you work for is it?

HARRY [reacts to TOM with a grimace that says touché! and turns to ANNA]: When are you going to get some comfortable furniture into this room?

ANNA [irritated almost to tears]: Oh sit on the floor, go away, stop nagging.

HARRY: Don’t be so touchy. The point I’m trying to make is, Tom’d never put up with a woman like you, he’s going to have a house with every modern convenience and everything just so … Anna, what’ve you done with Dave?

ANNA: I haven’t seen him for weeks.

HARRY: That’s silly, isn’t it now?

ANNA: No.

HARRY: Now I’m going to give you a lot of good advice, Anna and …

TOM: Fascinating, isn’t it? Harry giving people advice.

MARY: Harry may not know how to get his own life into order, but actually he’s rather good at other people’s.

HARRY: What do you mean, my life is in perfect order.

TOM: Indeed? May I ask how your wife is?

HARRY [in a much used formula]: Helen is wonderful, delightful, she is very happy and she loves me dearly.

TOM [with a sneer]: How nice.

HARRY: Yes, it is. And that’s what I’m going to explain to you, Anna. Look at Helen. She’s like you, she likes interesting weak men like me, and …

TOM: Weak is not the word I’d have chosen, I must say.

MARY: Surely not weak, Harry?

ANNA: Weak is new, Harry. Since when, weak?

HARRY: I’ll explain. It came to me in a flash, one night when I was driving home very late – it was dawn, to be precise, you see, weak men like me …

ANNA [suddenly serious]: Harry, I’m not in the mood.

HARRY: Of course you are. We are always in the mood to talk about ourselves. I’m talking about you, Anna. You’re like Helen. Now what does Helen say? She says, she doesn’t mind who I have affairs with provided they are women she’d like herself.

TOM: Charming.

MARY: But Harry, Helen’s got to say something … well, I mean to say.

ANNA: I simply can’t stand your damned alibis.

HARRY: Tom must have been bad for you, Anna, if you’re going to get all pompous. Helen and I …

ANNA [snapping]: Harry, you forget I know Helen very well.

HARRY [not realizing her mood]: Of course you do. And so do I. And you ought to take on Dave the way Helen’s taken me on …

ANNA: Harry, go away.

HARRY [still blithe]: No, Anna. I’ve been thinking. You’ve got to marry Dave. He needs you.

[MARY makes a warning gesture at HARRY, indicating ANNA.]

[to MARY] Don’t be silly, darling. [to ANNA again] Helen knows I’ll always come back to her. Anna, Dave needs you. Have a heart. What’ll Dave do?

ANNA [snapping into hysterical resentment]: I’ll tell you what he’ll do. He’ll do what you did. You married Helen who was very much in love with you. When she had turned into just another boring housewife and mother you began philandering. She had no alternative but to stay put.

HARRY: Anna, Anna, Anna!

ANNA: Oh shut up. I know Helen, I know exactly what sort of hell she’s had with you.

HARRY: Tom, you really have been bad for Anna, you’ve made her all bitchy.

ANNA: Dave will marry some girl who’s in love with him. Oh, he’ll fight every inch of the way, of course. Then there’ll be children and he’ll be free to do as he likes. He’ll have a succession of girls, and in between each one he’ll go back and weep on his wife’s shoulder because of his unfortunately weak character. Weak like hell. She’ll forgive him all right. He’ll even use her compliance as an additional attraction for the little girls, just as you do. My wife understands me, he’ll say, with a sloppy look on his face. She knows what I’m like. She’ll always be there to take me back. God almighty, what a man.

HARRY: Anna, you little bitch.

ANNA: That’s right. But there’s just one thing, Dave shouldn’t have picked on me. I’m economically independent. I have no urge for security so I don’t have to sell myself out. And I have a child already, so there’s no way of making me helpless, is there, dear weak, helpless Harry?

HARRY: Mary, you should have told me Anna was in such a bitchy mood and I wouldn’t have come up.

MARY: But I did tell you, and you said, ‘Well Anna won’t be bitchy with me.’

[The door bell, downstairs.]

MARY: I’ll go.

ANNA: Mary, I’m out.

MARY: Well don’t blame me for Harry, he insisted. [as she goes out] Pussy, pussy, puss, puss.

HARRY: I can’t think what Mary would do if Anna did get married.

TOM [spitefully]: They are rather like an old married couple, aren’t they?

[ANNA pulls down the window with a crash and turns her back on them.]

HARRY: But so nice to drop in on for aid and comfort when in trouble. [to ANNA’S back] Anna, I’m in trouble.

ANNA: Don’t worry, you’ll be in love with someone else in a few weeks.

HARRY [humorous but serious]: But I won’t. This girl, my poppet, she’s getting married. [as ANNA shrugs] For God’s sake woman, shut the window, it’s freezing. [ANNA shuts it, but remains looking down.] She met some swine at a party – actually he’s very nice. A handsome young swine – he really is nice. She’s marrying him – actually, I advised her to. Anna!

ANNA: Did you expect her to hang round for the rest of her life in a state of single blessedness because you didn’t want to break up your happy home with Helen? [she turns, sees his face, which is genuinely miserable] Oh all right. I’m sorry. I’m very sorry. [She puts her arms around him.]

HARRY: There’s my Anna. [to TOM] I’m sure you’ve never seen this side of her, but she is a sweet girl, at heart.

TOM: Well, now you’ve gained your little need of sympathy from Anna, perhaps I may be permitted to say a word or two?

HARRY: No. You two should just kiss and say goodbye and stop tormenting each other.

TOM: Anna I know that what goes on in the street is a hundred times more interesting than I am, but …

HARRY: Of course it is, she’s waiting for Dave.

ANNA: I’m not waiting for Dave.

[She comes away from the window. Sits on the bed, her head in her hands.]

TOM: I want to talk to Anna.

MARY [from downstairs]: Puss, puss, puss, puss.

TOM [mocking her]: Puss, puss, puss, puss.

HARRY: Mary should get married. Anna, you should make Mary get married before it’s too late.

TOM: Before it’s too late!

ANNA: Mary could marry if she wanted.

TOM [derisively]: Then why doesn’t she?

ANNA: Strange as it might seem to you, she doesn’t want to get married just for the sake of getting married.

HARRY: Yes, but that’s all very well, Anna. It’s all right for you – you’re such a self-contained little thing. But not for Mary. You should get her married regardless to the first clot who comes along.

ANNA: I – self-contained!

TOM: Yes, it’s true – self-contained!

MARY [from downstairs]: Pussy, pussy, yes come here, puss, puss, puss, puss.

TOM [to HARRY]: She’s getting worse. [as ANNA stiffens up] Yes, all right, Anna, but it’s true. [to HARRY] She’s man-crazy …

HARRY: Oh you silly ass.

TOM: Well she is. She’s crazy for a man, wide open, if you so much as smile at her, she responds. And Anna says she doesn’t want to marry. Who are you fooling, Anna?

ANNA [sweetly]: Perhaps she prefers to be sex-starved than to marry an idiot. Which is more than can be said about most men.

HARRY: Now Anna, don’t start, Anna, Tom’s a nice man, but he’s pompous. [to TOM] You’re a pompous ass, admit it, Tom.

TOM: All I said was, Mary’s man-crazy.

ANNA [on the warpath]: Do you know how Tom was living before he started with me?

HARRY: Yes, of course. Anna, don’t make speeches at us!

TOM: Well, how was I living before I started with you?

HARRY: Oh, my God.

ANNA: What is known as a bachelor’s life – Tom’s own nice inimitable version of it. He sat in his nice little flat, and round about ten at night, if he felt woman-crazy enough, he rang up one of three girls, all of whom were in love with him.

HARRY: Christ knows why.

ANNA: Imagine it, the telephone call at bedtime – are you free tonight, Elspeth, Penelope, Jessica? One of them came over, a drink or a cup of coffee, a couple of hours of bed, and then a radio-taxi home.

HARRY: Anna!

ANNA: Oh from time to time he explained to them that they mustn’t think his kind attentions to them meant anything.

HARRY: Anna, you’re a bore when you get like this.

TOM: Yes, you are.

ANNA: Then don’t call Mary names.

[MARY comes in.]

MARY [suspicious]: You were talking about me?

ANNA: No, about me.

MARY: Oh I thought it was about me. [to ANNA] There’s a girl wants to see you. She says it’s important. She wouldn’t give her name.

ANNA [she is thinking]: I see.

MARY: But she’s an American girl. It’s the wrong time of the year – summer’s for Americans.

ANNA: An American girl.

MARY: One of those nice bright neat clean American girls, how they do it, I don’t know, all I know is that you can tell from a hundred yards off they’d rather be seen dead than with their legs or their armpits unshaved, ever so antiseptic, she looked rather sweet really.

HARRY: Tell her to go away and we’ll all wait for you. Come on, Tom.

TOM: I’m staying.

HARRY: Come on, Mary, give me a nice cup of coffee.

MARY: It’s a long time since you and I had a good gossip.

[HARRY and MARY go out, arm in arm.]

TOM: Well, who is she?

ANNA: I don’t know.

TOM: I don’t believe you.

ANNA: You never do.

[MARY’S voice, and the voice of an American girl, outside on the stairs.]

[JANET STEVENS comes in. She is a neat attractive girl of about 22. She is desperately anxious and trying to hide it.]

JANET: Are you Anna Freeman?

ANNA: Yes. And this is Tom Lattimer.

JANET: I am Janet Stevens. [she has expected ANNA to know the name] Janet Stevens.

ANNA: How do you do?

JANET: Janet Stevens from Philadelphia. [as ANNA still does not react] I hope you will excuse me for calling on you like this.

ANNA: Not at all.

[JANET looks at TOM. ANNA looks at TOM. TOM goes to the window, turns his back.]

JANET [still disbelieving ANNA]: I thought you would know my name.

ANNA: No.

TOM: But she has been expecting you all afternoon.

JANET [at sea]: All afternoon?

ANNA [angry]: No, it’s not true.

JANET: I don’t understand, you were expecting me this afternoon?

ANNA: No. But may I ask, how you know me?

JANET: Well, we have a friend in common. Dave Miller.

TOM [turning, furious]: You could have said so, couldn’t you, Anna?

ANNA: But I didn’t know.

TOM: You didn’t know. Well I’m going. You’ve behaved disgracefully.

ANNA: Very likely. However just regard me as an unfortunate lapse from the straight and narrow on your journey to respectability.

[TOM goes out, slamming the door.]

ANNA [politely]: That was my – fiancé.

JANET: Oh, Dave didn’t say you were engaged.

ANNA: He didn’t know. And besides, I’m not ‘engaged’ any longer.

[A silence. ANNA looks with enquiry at JANET, who tries to speak and fails.]

ANNA: Please sit down, Miss Stevens.

[JANET looks around for somewhere to sit, sits on a chair, smiles socially. Being a well brought up young lady, and in a situation she does not understand, she is using her good manners as a last-ditch defence against breaking down.]

[ANNA looks at her, waiting.]

JANET: It’s this way, you see Dave and I … [At ANNA’S ironical look she stops.] … What a pretty room, I do so love these old English houses, they have such …

[ANNA looks at her: do get a move on.]

JANET: My father gave me a vacation in Europe for passing my college examinations. Yes, even when I was a little girl he used to promise me – if you do well at college I’ll give you a vacation in Europe. Well, I’ve seen France and Italy now, but I really feel most at home in England than anywhere. I do love England. Of course our family was English, way back of course, and I feel that roots are important, don’t you?

ANNA: Miss Stevens, what did you come to see me for?

JANET: Dave always says he thinks women should have careers. I suppose that’s why he admires you so much. Though of course, you do wear well. But I say to him, Dave, if you work at marriage then it is a career … sometimes he makes fun because I took domestic science and home care and child care as my subjects in college, but I say to him, Dave marriage is important, Dave, I believe that marriage and the family are the most rewarding career a woman can have, that’s why I took home care as my first subject because I believe a healthy and well-adjusted marriage is the basis for a healthy nation.

ANNA: You’re making me feel deficient in patriotism.

JANET: Oh, Dave said that too … [she almost breaks down, pulls herself together: fiercely] You’re patronizing me. I don’t think you should patronize me.

ANNA: Miss Stevens, do let’s stop this. Listen to me. I haven’t seen Dave for weeks. Is that what you came here to find out?

JANET: I know that you are such old friends. He talks about you a great deal.

ANNA: I’ve no doubt he does. [She waits for JANET to go on, then goes on herself.] There’s a hoary psychological joke – if I can use the word joke for a situation like this – about the way the betrayed women of the heartless libertine get together to lick their wounds – have you come here to make common cause with me over Dave? Because forgive me for saying so, but I don’t think you and I have anything in common but the fact we’ve both slept with Dave. And that is not enough for the basis of a beautiful friendship.

JANET: No! It wasn’t that at all, I came because … [she stops]

ANNA: I see. Then you’ve come because you’re pregnant. Well, how far have you got?

JANET: Five months.

ANNA: I see. And you haven’t told him.

ANNA: I knew if I told him he’d give me money and … well I love him. It would be good for him to have some responsibility wouldn’t it?

ANNA: I see.

JANET: Yes, I know how it looks, trapping a man. But when I was pregnant I was so happy, and only afterwards I thought – yes, I know how it looks, trapping a man, but he said he loved me, he said he loved me.

ANNA: But why come and tell me? [as JANET doesn’t answer] He’s ditched you, is that it?

JANET: No! Of course he hasn’t. [cracking] I haven’t seen him in days. I haven’t seen him. Where is he, you’ve got to tell me where he is. I’ve got to tell him about the baby.

ANNA: But I don’t know where he is.

JANET: You have to tell me. When he knows about the baby he’ll … [as ANNA shrugs] Ah come on now, who do you think you’re kidding? Well I’ve got his baby, you haven’t. You can’t do anything about that, can you. I’ve got his baby, I’ve got him.

ANNA: Very likely.

JANET: But what can I do? I want to be married. I’m just an ordinary girl and I want to be married, what’s wrong with that?

ANNA: There’s nothing wrong with that. But I haven’t seen Dave, and I don’t know where he is, and so there’s nothing I can do. [finally] And you shouldn’t have come to me.

[JANET goes out.]

ANNA [almost in tears]: Oh Christ. [stopping the tears, angrily] Damn. Damn.

[She goes to window. At once MARY comes in.]

MARY: Well who was she? [ANNA turns her back to hide her face from MARY.] Was she one of Dave’s girls? [ANNA nods. MARY moves so that she can see ANNA’S face.] Well, you knew there was one, didn’t you? [ANNA nods.] Well, then? [ANNA nods.]

ANNA: All right, Mary.

[MARY is in a jubilant mood. She has been flirting with HARRY. Now, seeing ANNA is apparently all right, she says what she came in to say.]

MARY: Harry and I are going out. There’s a place he knows we can get drinks. I told him you wouldn’t be interested. [The telephone starts ringing.] Aren’t you going to answer it? [as ANNA shakes her head] Odd, we’ve known each other all these years. He’s really sweet, Harry. You can say what you like, but it’s nice to have a man to talk to for a change – after all, how many men are there you can really talk to? [The telephone stops.] Anna, what are you in this state for?

ANNA: What I can’t stand is, the way he makes use of me. Do you know Mary, all this time he’s been letting her know I’m in the background?

MARY: Well you are, aren’t you?

ANNA: ‘But Janet, you must understand this doesn’t mean anything, because the woman I really love is Anna.’ He’s not even married to me, but he uses me as Harry uses Helen.

MARY: [not wanting to hear anything against HARRY at this moment] Oh I don’t know. After all, perhaps Helen doesn’t mind. They’ve been married so long.

ANNA: It really is remarkable how all Dave’s young ladies turn up here sooner or later. He talks about me – oh, quite casually, of course, until they go round the bend with frustration and curiosity, and they just have to come up to see what the enemy looks like. Well I can’t be such a bitch as all that, because I didn’t say, ‘My dear Miss Stevens, you’re the fifth to pay me a social call in three years.’

MARY: But you have been engaged to Tom.

ANNA: Yes. All right.

MARY: It’s funny, me and Harry knowing each other for so long and then suddenly …

ANNA: Mary! The mood Harry’s in somebody’s going to get hurt.

MARY: It’s better to get hurt than to live shut up.

ANNA: After losing that little poppet of his to matrimony he’ll be looking for solace.

MARY [offended]: Why don’t you concern yourself with Tom? Or with Dave? Harry’s not your affair. I’m just going out with him. [as she goes out] Nice to have a night out for a change, say what you like.

[The telephone rings. ANNA snatches off the receiver, wraps it in a blanket, throws it on the bed.

ANNA: I’m not talking to you, Dave Miller, you can rot first.

[She goes to the record player, puts on Mahalia Jackson’s ‘I’m on My Way’, goes to the mirror, looks into it. This is a long antagonistic look.]

ANNA [to her reflection]: All right then, I do wear well.

[She goes deliberately to a drawer, takes out a large piece of black cloth, unfolds it, drapes it over the mirror.]

ANNA [to the black cloth]: And a fat lot of good that does me.

[She now switches out the light. The room is tall, shadowy, with two patterns of light from the paraffin heaters reflected on the ceiling. She goes to the window, flings it up.]

ANNA [to the man on the pavement]: You poor fool, why don’t you go upstairs, the worst that can happen is that the door will be shut in your face.

[A knock on the door – a confident knock.]

ANNA: If you come in here, Dave Miller …

[DAVE comes in. He is crew cut, wears a sloppy sweater and jeans. Carries a small duffle bag. ANNA turns her back and looks out of the window. DAVE stops the record player. He puts the telephone receiver back on the rest. Turns on the light.]

DAVE: Why didn’t you answer the telephone?

ANNA: Because I have nothing to say.

DAVE [in a parody of an English upper-middle-class voice]: I see no point at all in discussing it.

ANNA [in the same voice]: I see no point at all in discussing it.

[DAVE stands beside ANNA at the window.]

DAVE [in the easy voice of their intimacy]: I’ve been in the telephone box around the corner ringing you.

ANNA: Did you see my visitor?

DAVE: No.

ANNA: What a pity.

DAVE: I’ve been standing in the telephone box ringing you and watching that poor bastard on the pavement.

ANNA: He’s there every night. He comes on his great black dangerous motor bike. He wears a black leather jacket and big black boots. He looks like an outrider for death in a Cocteau film – and he has the face of a frightened little boy.

DAVE: It’s lurve, it’s lurve, it’s lurve.

ANNA: It’s love.

[Now they stare at each other, antagonists, and neither gives way. DAVE suddenly grins and does a mocking little dance step. He stands grinning at her. ANNA hits him as hard as she can. He staggers. He goes to the other side of the carpet, where he sits cross-legged, his face in his hands.]

DAVE: Jesus, Anna.

ANNA [mocking]: Oh, quite so.

DAVE: You still love me, that’s something.

ANNA: It’s lurve, it’s lurve, it’s lurve.

DAVE: Yes. I had a friend once. He cheated on his wife, he came in and she laid his cheek open with the flat-iron.

ANNA [quoting him]: ‘That I can understand’ – a great country, America.

DAVE [in appeal]: Anna.

ANNA: No.

DAVE: I’ve been so lonely for you.

ANNA: Where have you been the last week?

DAVE [suspicious]: Why the last week?

ANNA: I’m interested.

DAVE: Why the last week? [a pause] Ringing you and getting no reply.

ANNA: Why ringing me?

DAVE: Who else? Anna, I will not be treated like this.

ANNA: Then, go away.

DAVE: We’ve been through this before. Can’t we get it over quickly?

ANNA: No.

DAVE: Come and sit down. And turn out the lights.

ANNA: No.

DAVE: I didn’t know it was as bad as that this time.

ANNA: How long did you think you could go on – you think you can make havoc as you like, and nothing to pay for it, ever?

DAVE: Pay? What for? You’ve got it all wrong, as usual.

ANNA: I’m not discussing it then.

DAVE: ‘I’m not discussing it.’ Well, I’m saying nothing to you while you’ve got your bloody middle-class English act on, it drives me mad.

ANNA: Middle-class English. I’m Australian.

DAVE: You’ve assimilated so well.

ANNA [in an Australian accent]: I’ll say it like this then – I’ll say it any way you like – I’m not discussing it. I’m discussing nothing with you when you’re in your role of tuppence a dozen street corner Romeo. [in English] It’s the same in any accent.

DAVE [getting up and doing his blithe dance step]: It’s the same in any accent. [sitting down again] Baby, you’ve got it wrong. [ANNA laughs.] I tell you, you’ve got it wrong, baby. ANNA [in American]: But baby, it doesn’t mean anything, let’s have a little fun together, baby, just you and me – just a little fun, baby … [in Australian] Ah, damn your guts, you stupid, irresponsible little … [in English] Baby, baby, baby – the anonymous baby. Every woman is baby, for fear you’d whisper the wrong name into the wrong ear in the dark.

DAVE: In the dark with you I use your name, Anna.

ANNA: You used my name.

DAVE: Ah, hell, man, well. Anna beat me up and be done with it and get it over. [a pause] OK, I know it. I don’t know what gets into me; OK I’m still a twelve-year-old slum kid standing on a street corner in Chicago, watching the expensive broads go by and wishing I had the dough to buy them all. OK, I know it. You know it. [a pause] OK and I’m an American God help me, and it’s no secret to the world that there’s bad man-woman trouble in America. [a pause] And everywhere else, if it comes to that. OK, I do my best. But how any man can be faithful to one woman beats me. OK, so one day I’ll grow up. Maybe.

ANNA: Maybe.

DAVE [switching to black aggression]: God, how I hate your smug female guts. All of you – there’s never anything free – everything to be paid for. Every time, an account rendered. Every time, when you’re swinging free there’s a moment when the check lies on the table – pay up, pay up, baby.

ANNA: Have you come here to get on to one of your anti-woman kicks?

DAVE: Well I’m not being any woman’s pet, and that’s what you all want. [leaping up and doing his mocking dance step] I’ve kept out of all the traps so far, and I’m going to keep out.

ANNA: So you’ve kept out of all the traps.

DAVE: That’s right. And I’m not going to stand for you either – mother of the world, the great womb, the eternal conscience. I like women, but I’m going to like them my way and not according to the rules laid down by the incorporated mothers of the universe.

ANNA: Stop it, stop it, stop boasting.

DAVE: But Anna, you’re as bad. There’s always a moment when you become a sort of flaming sword of retribution.

ANNA: At which moment – have you asked yourself? You and I are so close we know everything about each other – and then suddenly, out of the clear blue sky, you start telling me lies like – lies out of a corner-boy’s jest book. I can’t stand it.

DAVE [shouting at her]: Lies – I never tell you lies.

ANNA: Oh hell, Dave.

DAVE: Well you’re not going to be my conscience. I will not let you be my conscience.

ANNA: Amen and hear hear. But why do you make me your conscience?

DAVE [deflating]: I don’t know. [with grim humour] I’m an American. I’m in thrall to the great mother.

ANNA: Well I’m not an American.

DAVE [shouting]: No, but you’re a woman, and at bottom you’re the same as the whole lousy lot of…

ANNA: Get out of here then. Get out.

DAVE [he sits cross-legged, on the edge of the carpet, his head in his hands]: Jesus.

ANNA: You’re feeling guilty so you beat me up. I won’t let you.

DAVE: Come here.

[ANNA goes to him, kneels opposite him, lays her two hands on his diaphragm.]

Yes, like that. [he suddenly relaxes, head back, eyes closed] Anna, when I’m away from you I’m cut off from something – I don’t know what it is. When you put your hands on me, I begin to breathe.

ANNA: Oh. [She lets her hands drop and stands up.]

DAVE: Where are you going?

[ANNA goes back to the window. A silence. A wolf-whistle from the street. Another.]

ANNA: He’s broken his silence. He’s calling her. Deep calls to deep.

[Another whistle. ANNA winces.]

DAVE: You’ve missed me?

ANNA: All the time.

DAVE: What have you been doing?

ANNA: Working a little.

DAVE: What else?

ANNA: I said I’d marry Tom, then I said I wouldn’t.

DAVE [dismissing it]: I should think not.

ANNA [furious]: O-h-h-h.

DAVE: Seriously, what?

ANNA: I’ve been coping with Mary – her son’s marrying.

DAVE [heartily]: Good for him. Well, it’s about time.

ANNA: Oh quite so.

DAVE [mimicking her]: Oh quite so.

ANNA [dead angry]: I’ve also spent hours of every day with Helen, Harry’s ever-loving wife.

DAVE: Harry’s my favourite person in London.

ANNA: And you are his. Strange, isn’t it?

DAVE: We understand each other.

ANNA: And Helen and I understand each other.

DAVE [hastily]: Now, Anna.

ANNA: Helen’s cracking up. Do you know what Harry did? He came to her, because he knew this girl of his was thinking of getting married, and he said: Helen, you know I love you, but I can’t live without her. He suggested they should all live together in the same house – he, Helen and his girl. Regularizing things, he called it.

DAVE [deliberately provocative]: Yeah? Sounds very attractive to me.

ANNA: Yes, I thought it might. Helen said to him – who’s going to share your bed? Harry said, well, obviously they couldn’t all sleep in the same bed, but…

DAVE: Anna, stop it.

ANNA: Helen said it was just possible that the children might be upset by the arrangement.

DAVE: I was waiting for that – the trump card – you can’t do that, it might upset the kiddies. Well not for me, I’m out.

ANNA [laughing]: Oh are you?

DAVE: Yes. [ANNA laughs.] Have you finished?

ANNA: No. Harry and Helen. Helen said she was going to leave him. Harry said: ‘But darling, you’re too old to get another man now and …’

DAVE [mocking]: Women always have to pay – and may it long remain that way.

ANNA: Admittedly there’s one advantage to men like you and Harry. You are honest.

DAVE: Anna, listen, whenever I cheat on you it takes you about two weeks to settle into a good temper again. Couldn’t we just speed it up and get it over with?

ANNA: Get it over with. [she laughs]

DAVE: The laugh is new. What’s so funny?

[A wolf-whistle from the street. Then a sound like a wolf howling. ANNA slams the window up.]

DAVE: Open that window.

ANNA: No, I can’t stand it.

DAVE: Anna, I will not have you shutting yourself up. I won’t have you spitting out venom and getting all bitter and vengeful. Open that window.

[ANNA opens it. Stands by it, passive.]

Come and sit down. And turn the lights out.

[As she does not move, he turns out the light. The room as before: two patterned circles of light on the ceiling from the paraffin lamps.]

ANNA: Dave, it’s no point starting all over again.

DAVE: But baby, you and I will always be together, one way or another.

ANNA: You’re crazy.

DAVE: In a good cause. [he sits cross-legged on the edge of the carpet and waits] Come and sit. [ANNA slowly sits, opposite him. He smiles at her. She slowly smiles back. As she smiles, the walls fade out. They are two small people in the city, the big, ugly, baleful city all around them, over-shadowing them.]

DAVE: There baby, that’s better.

ANNA: OK.

DAVE: I don’t care what you do – you can crack up if you like, or you can turn Lesbian. You can take to drink. You can even get married. But I won’t have you shutting yourself up.

[A lorry roars. A long wolf-whistle. Shrill female voices from the street.]

ANNA: Those girls opposite quarrel. I hate it. Last night they were rolling in the street and pulling each other’s hair and screaming.

DAVE: OK. But you’re not to shut it out. You’re not to shut anything out.

ANNA: I’ll try.

[She very slowly gets to her feet, stands concentrating.]

DAVE: That’s right. Now, who are you?

END OF ACT ONE

Act Two

[ANNA and DAVE, in the same positions as at the end of Act One. No time has passed. The lights are out. The walls seemed to have vanished, so that the room seems part of the street. There is a silence. A lorry roars]

DAVE: Who are you?

ANNA [in English]: Anna Freeman.

DAVE: OK. Go, then.

[A silence.]

ANNA: I can’t. I’m all in pieces.

DAVE: Then go back. Who are you now?

ANNA [she slowly stands up, at the edge of the carpet]: Anna.

DAVE: Anna who?

ANNA [in Australian]: Anna MacClure from Brisbane [in English] The trouble is, she gets further and further away. She’s someone else. I know if she goes altogether then I’m done for. [a pause] [in Australian] The smell of petrol. In a broken-down old jalopy – six of us. It’s night. There’s a great shining moon. We’ve been dancing. I’m with Jack. We’ve stopped at the edge of the road by a petrol pump. All the others are singing and shouting and the petrol pump attendant’s angry as a cross cat. Jack says, ‘Anna, let’s get married.’ [Speaking to JACK] ‘No, Jack, what’s all this about, getting married. I want to live, Jack. I want to travel. I want to see the world … Yes, I know, but I don’t want kids yet. I don’t want … ’ [to DAVE] He says, ‘Anna you’ll be unhappy. I feel it in my bones, you’ll be unhappy.’ [she talks back to JACK] ‘I don’t care, I tell you. I know if I marry you, you’ll be for the rest of my life. You aren’t the world Jack … All right, then I’ll be unhappy. But I want a choice. Don’t you see, I want a choice.’ [she crouches down, her hands over her face] Let’s have the lights Dave.

DAVE: Wait. Go back some more – that’s not Anna MacClure the Australian. That’s Anna MacClure who’s already half in Europe.

ANNA: But it’s so hard.

DAVE: Breathe slowly and go. Who are you?

ANNA [slowly standing] [in a child’s voice, Australian]: Anna MacClure.

DAVE: Where?

ANNA: On the porch of our house. I’ve quarrelled with my mother. [she stands talking to her mother] I’m not going to be like you, ma, I’m not, I’m not. You’re stuck here, you never think of anything but me and my brother and the house. You’re old ma, you’re stupid. [listening while her mother lectures her] Yah, I don’t care. When I grow up I’m never going to be married, I’m not going to get old and dull. I’m going to live with my brother on an island and swim and catch fish and … [she sings] The moon is in my windowpane, the moon is in my bed, I’ll race the moon across the sky and eat it for my bread. I don’t care, ma, I don’t care … [She dances a blithe, defiant dance. In English] Dave, Dave, did you see? That was just like you.

[DAVE gets up and does his blithe defiant dance beside her on the carpet. He mocks her. ANNA furious, leaps over and smacks him.]

ANNA: ‘There, stupid child, you’re wicked and stupid you’re not going to defy me, so you think you’ll defy me … ’

[They both at the same moment crouch down in their former positions on either side of the carpet.]

ANNA: Let me have the light on now, please Dave.

[DAVE switches it on, the room becomes the room again. DAVE returns to where he was.]

DAVE [patting the carpet beside him]: Anna.

ANNA: No.

DAVE: Let me love you.

ANNA: No.

DAVE [laughing and confident]: You will, Anna, so why not now?

ANNA: You’ll never love me again, never never never.

DAVE [suddenly scared]: Why not? Why not?

ANNA: You know why.

DAVE: I swear I don’t.

ANNA: What am I going to be without you, what shall I do?

DAVE: But baby, I’m here.

ANNA: And what are you going to do with Janet?

DAVE: Janet?

ANNA: Janet Stephens, from Philadelphia.

DAVE: What about her?

ANNA: You don’t know her, of course.

DAVE: She’s a friend of mine, that’s all.

ANNA: Do you know Dave, if I walked into your room and found you in bed with a girl and said Dave, who is that girl, you’d say what girl? I don’t see any girl, it’s just your sordid imagination.

DAVE: Some time you’ve got to learn to trust me.

ANNA: What you mean by trust is, you tell me some bloody silly lie and I just nod my head and smile.

DAVE [inside the wild man]: That’s right baby, you should just nod your head and smile.

ANNA: You mean, it’s got nothing to do with me.

DAVE: That’s right, it’s got nothing to do with you.

[ANNA withdraws from him into herself.]

DAVE: Ah hell, Anna, she means nothing to me.

ANNA: Then it’s terrible.

[A pause.]

DAVE: I don’t understand why I do the things I do. I go moseying along, paying my way and liking myself pretty well, then I’m sounding off like something, and people start looking at me in a certain way, and I think, Hey, man is that you? Is that you there, Dave Miller? He’s taken over again, the wild man, the mad man. And I even stand on one side and watch pretty awed when you come to think of it. Yes, awed, that’s the word. You should be awed too, Anna, instead of getting scared. I can’t stand it when you’re scared of me.

ANNA: I simply want to run out of the way.

DAVE: The way of what? Go on, tell, I want to know.

ANNA: I want to hide from the flick-knives, from the tomahawks.

DAVE [with a loud, cruel laugh – he is momentarily inside the wild man]: Jesus. Bloody Englishwoman, middle-class lady, that’s what you are. [mimicking her], Flick-knives and tomahawks – how refined.

ANNA [in the voice of ANNA MACCLURE]: Dave, man, stand up and let it go, let it go.

[DAVE slowly stands. He switches off the light – the walls vanish, the city comes up. Back on the carpet, stands relaxed.]

ANNA: Who are you?

DAVE: Dave Miller, the boss of the gang, South Street, Al Capone’s territory … Chicago.

ANNA: What’s your name?

DAVE: Dave Miller.

ANNA: No, in your fantasy.

DAVE: Baby Face Nelson. No, but the way I dreamed him up, he was a sort of Robin Hood, stealing from the rich to give to the poor.

ANNA: Oh, don’t be so childish.

DAVE: That was the point of this exercise I thought.

ANNA: Sorry. Go ahead.

DAVE: I’m fifteen years old. I’m wearing a sharp hat, such a sweet sharp hat – pork-pie, cleft in the middle, set on side. The hat is in dark green. My jacket is two yards wide across the shoulders, nipped in at the waist, and skirted. In a fine, sweet cinnamon brown. Trousers in forest green, very fancy. My shirt is the finest money can buy, one dollar fifty, at Holy Moses Cut Price Emporium. In deciduous mauve. My tie is orange and black in lightening stripes. I wear velveteen spats, buttoned sweetly up the side, in hearth-rug white. I have a key-chain with a key on it, probably about six feet long, which could sweep the pavement if it hung free, but it never does, because we stand, lounging on the street corner, our home, men of the world, twirling the chain between our fingers, hour after hour through the afternoons and evenings. That year I’m a shoe-shine boy, a news-boy and a drug-store assistant. But my life, my real sweet life is on the pavement. [speaking to someone] Jedd, see that broad? [waits for an answer] Gee, some dish, bet she’s hot. [waits again] See that dame there, Jesus Christ. [he wolf-whistles]

[ANNA swanks, bottom wagging in front of him. DAVE whistles after her. He is echoed by a wolf-whistle from the street. ANNA wheels at the window to shut it.]

DAVE: I told you, keep it open.

[ANNA returns, squatting on the edge of the carpet.]

DAVE: Jesus, Anna, when I think of that kid, of all us kids, it makes me want to cry.

ANNA: Then cry.

DAVE: The year of our Lord, 1936, all our parents out of work, and World War II on top of us and we didn’t know it.

ANNA: Did you carry a knife?

DAVE: We all did.

ANNA: Ever use it?

DAVE: Hell no, I told you, we were fine idealistic kids. That was my anarchist period. We stood twirling our keychains on the corner of the street, eyeing the broads and I quoted great chunks out of Kroptkin to the guys. Anyone who joined my gang had to be an anarchist. When I had my socialist period, they had to be socialists.

ANNA: Go on.

DAVE: Isn’t it enough?

ANNA: I’m waiting for the tomahawk. You’re seven years old and you scalp all the nasty adults who don’t understand you.

DAVE: OK. I was a Red Indian nine-tenths of my childhood. OK. [in his parody of an English upper-class accent] There is no point whatever in discussing it … OK. Somewhere in my psyche is a tomahawk-twirling Red Indian … Anna? Do you know what’s wrong with America?

ANNA: Yes.

DAVE: At the street corners now the kids are not prepared to fight the world. They fight each other. Every one of us, we were prepared to take on the whole world single-handed. Not any longer, they know better, they’re scared. A healthy country has kids, every John Doe of them knowing he can lick the whole world, single-handed. Not any more.

ANNA: I know.

DAVE: You know. But you’re scared to talk. Everyone knows but they’re scared to talk. There’s a great dream dead in America. You look at us and see prosperity – and loneliness. Prosperity and men and women in trouble with each other. Prosperity and people wondering what life is for. Prosperity – and conformity. You look at us and you know it’s your turn now. We’ve pioneered the golden road for you …

ANNA: Who are you lecturing, Anna MacClure?

DAVE: OK, OK, OK. [he flops face down on the carpet]

[ANNA puts her arms around his shoulders.]

DAVE: If you think I’m any safer to touch when I’m flat than when I’m mobile you’re wrong. [He tries to pull her down. She pulls away.] OK. [pause] Did I tell you I went to a psycho-analyst? Yeah, I’m a good American after all, I went to a psycho-analyst.

ANNA [mocking him]: Do tell me about your psycho-analysis.

DAVE: Yeah, now I refer, throwing it away, to ‘when I was under psycho-analysis’.

ANNA: The way you refer, throwing it away, to ‘when I was a car salesman’, which you were for a week.

DAVE: Why do you always have to cut me down to size?

ANNA: So, how many times did you go?

DAVE: Twice.

[ANNA laughs.]

DAVE: The first interview was already not a success. Now, doc, I said. I have no wish to discuss my childhood. There is no point whatever in discussing it. I want to know how to live my life, doc. I don’t want you to sit there, nodding while I talk. I want your advice, I said. After all, doc, I said, you’re an educated man, Eton and Oxford, so you told me – throwing it away, of course. So pass on the message, doc, pass it on.

[ANNA rolls on the carpet, laughing.]

DAVE: It was no laughing matter. I talked for one hour by the clock, begging and pleading for the favour of one constructive word from him. But he merely sat like this, and then he said: ‘I’ll see you next Thursday, at five o’clock precisely.’ I said, it was no laughing matter – for a whole week I was in a trance, waiting for the ultimate revelation – you know how we all live, waiting for that revelation? Then I danced up to his room and lay on to his couch and lay waiting. He said not a word. Finally I said don’t think I’m resisting you, doc, please don’t think it. Talk doc, I said. Give. Let yourself go. Then the hour was nearly up. I may say, I’d given him a thumb-nail sketch of my life previously. He spoke at last: ‘Tell me, Mr Miller, how many jobs did you say you had had?’ My God, doc, I said, nearly falling over myself in my eagerness to oblige, if I knew, I’d tell you. ‘You would admit,’ he said at last, ‘that the pattern of your life shows, ho, hum, ha, a certain instability?’ My God, yes, doc, I said, panting at his feet, that’s it, you’re on to it, hold fast to it doc, that’s the word, instability. Now give doc, give. Tell me, why is it that a fine upstanding American boy like me, with all the advantages our rich country gives its citizens, why should I be in such trouble. And why should so many of us be in such trouble – I’m not an American for nothing, I’m socially minded, doc. Why are there so many of us in such trouble? Tell me doc. Give. And why should you, Dr Melville Cooper-Anstey, citizen of England, be sitting in that chair, in a position to dish out advice and comfort? Of course I know that you got all wrapped up in this thing because you, uh, kind of like people, doc, but after all, to kinda like people doc, puts you in a pretty privileged class for a start – so few citizens can afford to really kinda like people. So tell me doc, tell me …

ANNA: Well don’t shout at me, I’m not Dr Melville Cooper-Anstey.

DAVE: You listen just like him – judging. In possession of some truth that’s denied to me.

ANNA: I’ve always got to be the enemy. You’ve got to have an enemy …

DAVE: You’re right. I’ve got to have an enemy. Why not? I’m not going to love my brother as myself if he’s not worth it. Nor my sister, if it comes to that – where was I?

ANNA: Kinda liking people.

DAVE: There was a sort of thoughtful pause. I waited, biting my nails. Then he said, or drawled. ‘Tell me, just at random now, is there any thing or event or happening that has seemed to you significant. Just to give us something to get our teeth into, Mr Miller?’ Well, doc, I said, just at random, and picking a significant moment from a life full of significant moments, and on principle at that – latch on to that doc, it’s important in our case, that my life has been uninterruptedly full of significant moments … but has yours doc? I want to know? We should talk as equals doc, has your life been as full as mine of significant moments?

ANNA: Dave, stop boasting.

DAVE: Hell, Anna. If you love me, it’s because I lived that way, Well? And so. But to pull just one little cat or kitten out of the bag, doc, I would say it was the moment I woke beside a waitress in Minnesota, and she said to me in her sweet measured voice: ‘Honey you’re nuts. Did you know that?’ … Well, to tell the truth, no, I hadn’t known it. Light flooded in on me. I’ve been living with it ever since. And so. I was all fixed up to see one of your opposite numbers in the States, my great country, that was in LA, California, where I happened to be at the time, writing scripts for our film industry. Then I heard he was a stool pigeon for the FBI. No, don’t look like that doc, don’t – very distasteful, I’ll admit, but the world’s a rough place. Half his patients were int-ell-ectuals, and Reds and Pinks, since intellectuals so often tend to be, and after every couch session, he was moseying off to the FBI with information. Now, doc, here’s an American and essentially socially-minded, I want an answer, in this great country, England, I can come to you with perfect confidence that you won’t go trotting off to the MI5, to inform them that during my communist period I was a communist. That is, before I was expelled from that institution for hinting that Stalin had his weak moments. I tend to shoot off my mouth, doc. A weakness, I know, but I know that you won’t, and that gives me a profound feeling of security.

ANNA: Dave, you’re nuts.

DAVE: So said the waitress in Minnesota. Say it often enough and I’ll believe it.

ANNA: So what did Dr Cooper-Anstey say?

DAVE: He lightly, oh so lightly, touched his fingertips together, and he drawled: ‘Tell me Mr Miller, how many women have you had?’

[ANNA laughs.]

DAVE: Hey doc, I said, I was talking seriously. I was talking about the comparative states of liberty in my country and in yours. He said: ‘Mr Miller, don’t evade my question.’

[ANNA laughs.]

DAVE: OK doc, if you’re going to be a small-minded … but let’s leave the statistics, doc. I’m pretty well schooled in this psycho-analysis bit, I said, all my fine stable well integrated friends have been through your mill. And so I know that if I pulled out a notebook full of statistics, you’d think I was pretty sick – you may think it careless of me, doc, but I don’t know how many women I’ve had. But Mr Miller, he drawled, you must have some idea? Well, at this point I see that this particular morale-builder is not for me. Tell me, Dr Melville Cooper-Anstey, I said, how many women have you had?

[ANNA rolls, laughing.]

DAVE: Hey, Anna, this is serious girl. A serious matter … hey, ho, he was mad, was Dr Melville Cooper-Anstey sore. He sat himself up to his full height, and he told me in tones of severe displeasure, that I was an adolescent. Yeah, doc, I said, we Americans are all children, we’re all adolescent, we know that. But I wanted to know – how many women have you had doc? Because we have to talk man to man, doc, adolescent or not. There’s got to be some sort of equality around this place, I said. After all, I said, one woman is not like another doc, believe me, if you’ve slept with one woman you’ve not slept with them all and don’t you think it. And besides, doc, I said, you’re an Englishman. That is not without relevance. Because, judging from my researches into this field, Englishmen don’t like women very much. So English women complain. So they murmur in the dark night watches with their arms gratefully around the stranger’s neck. Now I like women doc, I like them. The point is, do you? He laughed. Like this [DAVE gives a high whinnying laugh] But I persisted. I said, doc, do you like your wife? And what is more important, does she like you? Does she, doc? And so.

ANNA: And so?

DAVE: And so he kicked me out, with all the dignity an upperclass Englishman brings to such matters. In tones frozen with good taste, he said, ‘Mr Miller, you know how to find your own way out, I think.’

ANNA: It’s all very well.

DAVE: [mimicking her] It’s all very well, don’t freeze up on me Anna, I won’t have it. [a pause] Anna, he did vouchsafe me with two little bits of information from the heights of integration. One. He said I couldn’t go on like this. I said, that’s right, that’s why I’ve come to you. And two. He said I should get married, have two well-spaced children and a settled job. Ah, doc, now you’re at the hub of the thing. What job, I said? Because I’ll let you into a secret. What’s wrong with all of us is not that our mummies and daddies weren’t nice to us it’s that we don’t believe the work we do is important. Oh, I know I’m earnest, doc, I’m pompous and earnest – but I need work that makes me feel I’m contributing. So doc, give – I’m a man of a hundred talents, none of them outstanding. But I have one thing, doc, just one important thing – if I spend eight hours a day working, I need to know that men, women and children are benefiting by my work. So … What job shall I do. Tell me.

ANNA: So?

DAVE: He said I should get any job that would enable me to keep a wife and two children, and in this way I would be integrated into society. [he flings himself down on the carpet] Anna, for God’s sake, Anna.

ANNA: Don’t ask me.

DAVE: Why not? I can’t ask Dr Anstey. Because the significant moment I keep coming back to he wouldn’t see at all. It wasn’t the moment I decided to leave America. I drove right across the States, looking up all my friends, the kids who’d been world-challengers with me. They were all married. Some of them were divorced, of course, but that’s merely an incident in the process of being married. They all had houses, cars, jobs, families. They were not pleased to see me – they knew I was still unintegrated. I asked each one a simple question. Hey, man, I said, this great country of ours, it’s in no too healthy a state. What are we going to do about it? And do you know what they said?

ANNA: Don’t rock the boat.

DAVE: You’ve got it in one, kid. But I had one ace up my sleeve. There was my old buddy, Jedd. He’ll still be right in there, fighting. So I walked into his apartment where he was sitting with his brand new second wife. There was a nervous silence. Then he said: Are you successful yet, Dave? And so I took the first boat over.

ANNA: And the wife and the two well-spaced kids?

DAVE: You know I can’t get married. You know that if I could I’d marry you. And perhaps I should marry you. How about it?

ANNA: No. The wedding would be the last I’d see of you – you’d be off across the world like a dog with a fire-cracker tied to its tail.

DAVE: I know. So I can’t get married. [a pause] Why don’t you just trap me into it? Perhaps I need simply to be tied down?

ANNA: No.

DAVE: Why not?

ANNA: Any man I have stays with me, voluntarily, because he wants to, without ties.

DAVE: Your bloody pride is more important to you than what I need.

ANNA: Don’t beat me up.

DAVE: I will if I want. You’re my woman so if I feel like beating you up I will. And you can fight back … Anna what are you being enigmatic about? All the time, there’s something in the air, that’s not being said. What is it?

ANNA: Not being said, I keep trying. Don’t you really know.

DAVE [in a panic]: No. What?

ANNA: If I told you, you’d say I was just imagining it. All right, I’ll try again, Janet Stevens.

DAVE [furious]: You’re a monomaniac. Janet Stevens. Do you imagine that a nice little middle-class girl, whose poppa’s sort of sub-manager for an insurance company, do you imagine she can mean anything to me?

ANNA: Oh my God, Dave.

DAVE: You’re crazy. It’s you that’s crazy.

ANNA: Dave, while you’re banging and crashing about the world, playing this role and that role, filling your life full of significant moments – there are other people in the world … hell, what’s the use of talking to you. [a pause] As a matter of interest, and this is a purely abstract question, suppose you married Janet Stevens, what would you have to do?

DAVE: Anna, are you crazy? Can you see me? God help me, I’m a member of that ever-increasing and honourable company, the world’s ex-patriates. Like you, Anna.

ANNA: Oh, all right.

DAVE: How the hell could I marry her? She wouldn’t under-stand a word I ever said, for a start.

ANNA: Oh all right.

DAVE: ‘There’s no point at all in discussing it.’

ANNA: None at all.

DAVE: I said to Dr Melville Cooper-Anstey: This society you want me to be integrated with, do you approve of it? If you don’t, what are you doing, sitting there with those big black scissors cutting people into shapes to fit it? Well, doc, I’ll tell you something, I don’t approve of society, it stinks. I don’t want to fit into it, I want society to fit itself to me – I’ll make a deal with you, doc, I’ll come and lie on this comfortable couch of yours, Tuesdays and Fridays from 2 to 3 for seven years, on condition that at the end of that time society is a place fit for Dave Miller to live in. How’s that for a proposition doc? Because of course that means you’ll have to join the Dave Miller fraternity for changing the world. You join my organization and I’ll join yours. [he turns on ANNA] Hey, Anna, don’t just lie there, reserving judgment.

ANNA: I didn’t say a word.

DAVE: You never have to. You’re like Dr Melville Cooper-Anstey – you put your spiritual fingertips together and purse your lips.

ANNA [furious]: Dave do you know something – when you need an enemy, you turn me into a kind of – lady welfare worker. Who was the great enemy of your childhood? The lady welfare worker. [jumping up – in Australian] I’m Anna MacClure the daughter of a second-hand car dealer. My grand-father was a horse-doctor. My great-grand-father was a stock farmer. And my great-great-grand-father was a convict, shipped from this our mother country God bless her to populate the outback. I’m the great-great-grand-daughter of a convict, I’m the aristocracy so don’t get at me, Dave Miller, corner-boy, street-gang-leader – I’m as good as you are, any day. [he pulls her down on to the carpet, she pushes his hands away] No. I told you, no.

DAVE [swinging her round to sit by him. His arms round her]: OK then baby, we don’t have to make love. Like hell we don’t. OK sit quiet and hold my hand. Do you love me, Anna?

ANNA: Love you? You are me. [mocking] You are the flame, the promise and the enchantment. You are for me – what Janet Stevens is for you. [she laughs] Imagine it Dave Miller, for you the flame is embodied in a succession of well-conducted young ladies, each one more banal than the last. For me – it’s you. [suddenly serious] You are my soul.

DAVE [holding her down beside him]: If I’m your soul, then surely it’s in order to sit beside me?

[They sit, arms round each other, ANNA’S head on his shoulder.]

ANNA: I only breathe freely when I’m with you.

DAVE [complacent]: I know.

ANNA [furious]: What do you mean? I was on the point of getting married.

DAVE: Don’t be absurd.

ANNA: What’s going to become of us?

DAVE: Perhaps I shall go back to Dr Melville Cooper-Anstey – like hell.

ANNA: It’s not fair to take it out of Dr Melville Cooper-Anstey just because he isn’t God.

DAVE: Of course it’s fair. If God wasn’t dead I wouldn’t be going to Dr Melville Cooper-Anstey. Perhaps I should wrestle with him – after all, these people have what’s the word? Stability.

ANNA: Stability. Security. Safety.

DAVE: You were born with one skin more than I have.

ANNA [mocking]: But I come from a stable home.

DAVE: Dr Melville Cooper-Anstey said to me: ‘Mr Miller, your trouble is, you come from a broken home.’ But doc, I said, my home wasn’t broken – my parents were both union organizers. He winced. A look of distaste settled around his long sensitive nose. He fought for the right comment. At last it came: ‘Really?’ he said. Yeah, really, I said. My parents were professional union organisers.

ANNA [being DR MELVILLE COOPER-ANSTEY]: Union organizers, Mr Miller?

DAVE: That’s right, doc, it’s true that my childhood was spent hither and thither as you might say, but it was in a good cause. My mother was usually organizing a picket line in Detroit while my father was organizing a strike in Pittsburgh.

ANNA: Really, Mr Miller.

DAVE: But doc, it was the late ’twenties and early ’thirties – people were hungry, they were out of work.

ANNA: You must stick to the point Mr Miller.

DAVE: But if I spent my time hither and thither it was not because my parents quarrelled. They loved each other.

ANNA: Were you, or were you not, a disturbed child, Mr Miller?

DAVE: The truth compels me to state, I was a disturbed child. But in a good cause. My parents thought the state of the world was more important than me, and they were right, I am on their side. But I never really saw either of them. We scarcely met. So my mother was whichever lady welfare worker that happened to be dealing with the local delinquents at the time, and my father was the anarchists, the Jewish socialist youth, the communists and the Trotskyists. In a word, the radical tradition – oh, don’t laugh doc. I don’t expect they’ll have taught you about the radical tradition in Oxford, England, but it stood for something. And it will again – it stood for the great dream – that life can be noble and beautiful and dignified.

ANNA: And what did he say?

DAVE: He said I was an adolescent. Doc, I said, my childhood was disturbed – by the great dream – and if yours was not, perhaps after all you had the worst of it.

ANNA: You are evading the issue, Mr Miller.

DAVE: But you’re all right, you have stability – Anna, you didn’t come from a broken home.

ANNA: No, I come from a well-integrated, typical stable marriage.

DAVE: Then tell me Anna, tell me about stable and well-integrated marriage.

ANNA [standing up and remembering. She shudders]: My mother wanted to be a great pianist. Oh she was not without talent. She played at a concert in Brisbane once – that was the high point of her life. That night she met my father. They married. She never opened the piano after I was born. My father never earned as much money as he thought life owed him – for some reason, the second-hand cars had a spite on him. My mother got more and more garrulous. In a word, she was a nag. My father got more and more silent. But he used to confide in me. He used to tell me what his dreams had been when he was a young man. Oh yes, he was a world-changer too, before he married.

DAVE: All young men are world-changers, before they marry.

ANNA: OK. It’s not my fault …

[They look at each other. DAVE leaps up, switches out the light. DAVE stands across from ANNA, in a hunched, defeated pose. ANNA has her hands on her hips, a scold.]

ANNA: Yes, Mr MacClure, you said that last month – but how am I going to pay the bill from the store, tell me that?

DAVE [in Australian]: A man came in today, he said he might buy that Ford.

ANNA: Might buy! Might buy! And I promised Anna a new coat, I promised her, this month, a new coat.

DAVE: Then Anna can do without, it won’t hurt her.

ANNA: That’s just like you – you always say next month, next month things will be better – and how about the boy, how can we pay his fees, we promised him this year …

DAVE: Ah, shut up. [shouting] Shut up. I said. Shut up …

[He turns away, hunched up.]

ANNA [speaking aloud the monologue of her mother’s thoughts]: Yes, that’s how I spend my life, pinching and saving – all day, cooking and preserving, and making clothes for the kids, that’s all I ever do, I never even get a holiday. And it’s for a man who doesn’t even know I’m here – well, if he had to do without me, he’d know what I’ve done for him. He’d value me if he had to do without me – if I left him, he’d know, soon enough. There’s Mr Jones from the store; he’s a soft spot for me, trying to kiss me when there’s no one there but us two, yes, I’d just have to lift my finger and Mr Jones would take me away – I didn’t lack for men before I married – they came running when I smiled. Ah God in heaven, if I hadn’t married this good-for-nothing here, I’d be a great pianist, I’d know all the golden cities of the world -Paris, Rome, London, I’d know the great world, and here I am, stuck in a dump like this, with two ungrateful kids and a no-good husband …

DAVE [speaking aloud MR MACCLURE’S thoughts]: Well what the hell does she want – I wouldn’t be here in this dump at all if it wasn’t for her; does she think that’s all I’m fit for, selling old cars, to keep food and clothes in the home? Why, if I hadn’t married her, I’d be free to go where I liked – she sees me as a convenience to get money to keep her and her kids, that’s all she cares about, the kids, she doesn’t care for me. Without her I’d be off across the world – the world’s a big place I’d be free to do what I liked – and the women, yes, the women, why, she doesn’t regard me, but only last week, Mrs Jones was giving me the glad eye from behind the counter when her old man wasn’t looking – yes, she’d better watch out, she’d miss me right enough if I left her …

ANNA [as ANNA]: A typical well-integrated marriage. [as her MOTHER]: Mr MacClure, are you listening to me?

DAVE [as MR MACCLURE]: Yes, dear.

ANNA [going to him, wistful]: You’re not sorry you married me?

DAVE: No dear, I’m not sorry I married you.

[They smile at each other, ironical.]

ANNA [as ANNA]: The highest emotion they ever knew was a kind of ironical compassion – the compassion of one prisoner for another … [as her MOTHER] There’s the children, dear. They are both fine kids, both of them.

DAVE: Yes, dear, they’re both fine kids. [patting her] There, there dear, it’s all right, don’t worry dear.

ANNA [as ANNA]: That’s how it was. And when I was nine years old I looked at that good fine stable marriage and at the marriages of our friends and neighbours and I swore, to the God I already did not believe in, God, I said, God, if I go down in loneliness and misery, if I die alone somewhere in a furnished room in a lonely city that doesn’t know me – I’ll do that sooner than marry as my father and mother were married. I’ll have the truth with the man I’m with or I’ll have nothing. [shuddering] Nothing.

DAVE: Hey – Anna!

[He switches on the lights, fast. Goes to her.]

DAVE [gently]: Perhaps the irony was the truth.

ANNA: No, no, no. It was not.

DAVE [laughing at her, but gently]: You’re a romantic, Anna Freeman. You’re an adolescent.

ANNA: Yes, I’m an adolescent. And that’s how I’m going to stay. Anything, anything rather than the man and woman, the jailed and the jailer, living together, talking to themselves, and wondering what happened that made them strangers. I won’t, I’ll die alone first. And I shall. I shall.

DAVE [holding her]: Hey, Anna, Anna. [gently laughing] You know what Dr Melville Cooper-Anstey would say to that?

ANNA: Yes.

DAVE: And what all the welfare workers would say?

ANNA: Yes.

DAVE: And what all the priests would say?

ANNA: Yes.

DAVE: And what the politicians would say?

ANNA: Yes. [she tears herself from him] Don’t rock the boat.

DAVE: [taking her up]: Don’t rock the boat. [he switches off the lights]

[They look at each other, beginning to laugh. The following sequence, while they throw slogans, or newspaper headlines at each other should be played with enjoyment, on the move, trying to out-cap each other.]

ANNA: Don’t rock the boat – work.

DAVE: Produce goods and children for the State.

ANNA: Marry young.

DAVE: The unit of society is a stable marriage.

ANNA: The unit of a healthy society is a well-integrated family.

DAVE: Earn money.

ANNA: Remember the first and worst sin is poverty.

DAVE: The first and best virtue is to own a comfortable home full of labour-saving devices.

ANNA: If you have too much leisure, there are football matches, the pools and television.

DAVE: If you still have too much leisure be careful not to spend it in ways that might rock the boat.

ANNA: Don’t rock the boat – society might have its minor imperfections, but they are nothing very serious.

DAVE: Don’t dream of anything better – dreams are by definition neurotic.

ANNA: If you are dissatisfied with society, you are by definition unstable.

DAVE: If your soul doesn’t fit into the patterns laid down for you –

ANNA: Kill yourself, but don’t rock the boat.

DAVE: Be integrated.

ANNA: Be stable.

DAVE: Be secure.

ANNA: Be integrated or –

DAVE:

Die! Die! Die!

ANNA:

DAVE: The trouble with you, Anna, is that you exaggerate everything.

ANNA: The trouble with you Dave, is that you have no sense of proportion.

DAVE: Proportion. I have no sense of proportion. I must scale myself down … I have spent my whole life on the move … I’ve spent my youth on the move across the continent and back again – from New York to Pittsburgh, from Pittsburgh to Chicago, from Chicago … [by now he is almost dancing his remembering] … across the great plains of the Middle West to Salt Lake City and the Rocky Mountains, and down to the sea again at San Francisco. Then back again, again, again, from West to East, from North to South, from Dakota to Mexico and back again … and sometimes, just sometimes, when I’ve driven twelve hours at a stretch with the road rolling up behind me like a carpet, sometimes I’ve reached it, sometimes I’ve reached what I’m needing – my head rests on the Golden Gates, with one hand I touch Phoenix, Arizona, and with the other I hold Minneapolis, and my feet straddle from Maine to the Florida Keys. And under me America rocks, America rocks – like a woman.

ANNA: Or like the waitress from Minnesota.

DAVE: Ah, Jesus!

ANNA: You are maladjusted Mr Miller!

DAVE: But you aren’t, do tell me how you do it!

ANNA: Now when I can’t breathe any more I shut my eyes and I walk out into the sun – I stand on a ridge of high country and look out over leagues and leagues of – emptiness. Then I bend down and pick up a handful of red dust, a handful of red dust and I smell it. It smells of sunlight.

DAVE: Of sunlight.

ANNA: I tell you, if I lived in this bloody mildewed little country for seven times seven years, my flesh would be sunlight. From here to here, sunlight.

DAVE: You’re neurotic, Anna, you’ve got to face up to it.

ANNA: But you’re all right, you’re going to settle in a split-level house with a stable wife and two children.

DAVE [pulling ANNA to the front of the stage and pointing over and down into the house]: Poke that little nose of yours over your safe white cliffs and look down – see all those strange coloured fish down there – not cod, and halibut and Dover sole and good British herring, but the poisonous coloured fish of Paradise.

ANNA: Cod. Halibut. Dover Sole. Good British herring.

DAVE: Ah, Jesus, you’ve got the soul of a little housewife from Brixton.

ANNA [leaping up and switching on the lights]: Or from Philadelphia. Well let me tell you Dave Miller, any little housewife from Brixton or Philadelphia could tell you what’s wrong with you.

DAVE [mocking]: Tell me baby.

ANNA: You are America, the America you’ve sold your soul to – do you know what she is?

DAVE [mocking]: No baby, tell me what she is.

ANNA: She’s that terrible woman in your comic papers – a great masculine broad-shouldered narrow-hipped black-booted blonde beastess, with a whip in one hand and a revolver in the other. And that’s why you’re running, she’s after you, Dave Miller, as she’s after every male American I’ve ever met. I bet you even see the Statue of Liberty with great black thigh-boots and a pencilled moustache – the frigid tyrant, the frigid goddess.

DAVE [mocking]: But she’s never frigid for me, baby. [he does his little mocking dance]

ANNA: God’s gift to women, Dave Miller.

DAVE: That’s right, that’s right baby.

ANNA: And have you ever thought what happens to them – the waitress in Minnesota, the farmer’s wife in Nebraska, the club-hostess in Detroit? Dave Miller descends for one night, a gift from God, and leaves the next day. ‘Boo-hoo, boo-hoo,’ she cries, ‘stay with me baby.’ ‘I can’t baby, my destiny waits’ – your destiny being the waitress in the next drive-in café. [she is now dancing around him] And why don’t you stay, or don’t you know? It’s because you’re scared. Because if you stay, she might turn into the jackbooted whip-handling tyrant.

DAVE: No. I’m not going to take the responsibility for you. That’s what you want, like every woman I’ve ever known. That I should say, I love you baby and …

ANNA: I love you, Anna Freeman.

DAVE: I love you, honey.

ANNA: I love you, Anna Freeman.

DAVE: I love you, doll.

ANNA: I love you, Anna Freeman.

DAVE: I love you – but that’s the signal for you to curl up and resign your soul to me. You want me to be responsible for you.

ANNA: You’ll never be responsible for anyone. [flat] One day you’ll learn that when you say I love you baby it means something.

DAVE: Well, everything’s running true to form – I haven’t been back a couple of hours but the knives are out and the tom-toms beating for the sex-war.

ANNA: It’s the only clean war left. It’s the only war that won’t destroy us all. That’s why we are fighting it.

DAVE: Sometimes I think you really hate me, Anna.

ANNA [mocking]: Really? Sometimes I think I’ve never hated anyone so much in all my life. A good clean emotion hate is. I hate you.

DAVE: Good, then I hate you.

ANNA: Good, then get out, go away. [She wheels to the window, looks out. He goes to where his duffle bag is, picks it up, drops it, and in the same circling movement turns to face her as she says] I hate you because you never let me rest.

DAVE: So love is rest? The cosy corner, the little nook?

ANNA: Sometimes it ought to be.

DAVE: Sometimes it is.

ANNA: Ha! With you! You exhaust me. You take me to every extreme, all the time, I’m never allowed any half-measures.

DAVE: You haven’t got any.

ANNA: Ah, hell. [she flings her shoes at him, one after the other. He dodges them, jumps to the bed, crouches on it, patting it]

DAVE: Truce, baby, truce …

ANNA [mocking him]: You’re going to love me, baby, warm-hearted and sweet? Oh you’re a good lay baby, I’d never say you weren’t.

[The sound of screechings and fighting from the street. ANNA is about to slam the window down, stops on a look from DAVE.]

ANNA: Last night the four of them were scratching each other and pulling each other’s hair while a group of fly-by-night men stood and watched and laughed their heads off. Nothing funnier, is there, than women fighting?

DAVE: Sure, breaks up the trade union for a bit … [this is black and aggressive – she reacts away from him. He looks at her, grimaces] Hell, Anna.

[He goes fast to the mirror, studies the black cloth.]

DAVE: What’s the pall for?

ANNA: I don’t like my face.

DAVE: Why not?

ANNA: It wears too well.

DAVE: You must be hard-up for complaints against life …

[looking closely at her] You really are in pieces, aren’t you? You mean you went out and bought this specially?

ANNA: That’s right.

DAVE: Uh-huh – when?

ANNA: When we quarrelled last time – finally, if you remember?

DAVE: Uh-huh. Why really, come clean?

ANNA: It would seem to suit my situation.

DAVE: Uh-huh … [he suddenly whips off the cloth and drapes it round his shoulders like a kind of jaunty cloak, or cape. Talking into the mirror, in angry, mocking self-parody] Hey there, Dave Miller, is that you, man? [in a Southern accent] Yes, Ma’am, and you have a pretty place around here. Mind if I stay a-while? Yeah, I sure do like your way of doing things … [accent of the Mid-West] Hi, babe, and what’ve you got fixed for tonight? Yes, this is the prettiest place I’ve seen for many a day … [in English] Why, hullo, how are you? [he crashes his fist into the mirror]

[ANNA, watching him, slowly comes from window as he talks, first crouches on the carpet, then collapses face down – she puts her hands over her ears, then takes them away.]

DAVE [into mirror]: Dave Miller? David Abraham Miller? No reply. No one at home. Anna, do you know what I’m scared of? One of these fine days I’ll look in the glass, expecting to see a fine earnest ethical young … and there’ll be nothing there. Then, slowly, a small dark stain will appear on the glass, it will slowly take form and … Anna, I want to be a good man. I want to be a good man.

ANNA [for herself]: I know.

[But he has already recovered. He comes to her, pulls her up to sit by him.]

DAVE: If that God of theirs ever dishes out any medals to us, what’ll it be for?

ANNA: No medals for us.

DAVE: Yes, for trying. For going on. For keeping the doors open.

ANNA: Open for what?

DAVE: You know. Because if there’s anything new in the world anywhere, any new thought, or new way of living, we’ll be ready to hear the first whisper of it. When Dr Melville Cooper-Anstey, imagines God, how does he imagine him?

ANNA: As Dr Melville Cooper-Anstey, two sizes larger.

DAVE: But we’ve got to do better. Anna look – the walls are down, and anyone or anything can come in. Now imagine off the street comes an entirely new and beautiful phenomenon, a new human being.

ANNA: Jewish boy – you’re a good Jewish boy after all waiting for the Messiah.

DAVE: That’s what everyone’s waiting for, even if they don’t know it – something new to be born. Anna, supposing superman walked in now off the street, how would you imagine him?

ANNA: Superwoman.

DAVE: Oh OK.

ANNA [in despair]: Me.

DAVE: I know. I know it. Me too. I sit and think and think – because if we don’t know what we want to grow into, how can we shape ourselves better? So I concentrate until my brain is sizzling, and who comes in through the door – me!

ANNA: Just once it wasn’t me.

DAVE [excited]: Who?

ANNA: I was sitting here, like this. I was thinking – if we can’t breed something better than we are, we’ve had it, the human race has had it. And then, suddenly …

DAVE: What?

ANNA: He walked in, twitching his tail. An enormous, glossy padding tiger. The thing was, I wasn’t at all surprised. Well tiger, I said, and who do you belong to?

DAVE [furious]: Anna, a tiger walks in here, and all you can say is, wild beast, whose label is around your neck?

ANNA: I thought you wanted to know.

DAVE: Go on.

ANNA: The tiger came straight towards me. Hullo tiger, I said, have you escaped from the zoo?

DAVE [mocking]: Of course he’s escaped from the zoo. He couldn’t be a wild tiger, could he?

ANNA [she kneels, talking to the tiger]: Tiger, tiger, come here. [she fondles the tiger] Tiger, tiger – The tiger purred so loud that the sound drowned the noise of the traffic. And then suddenly – [ANNA starts back, clutching at her arms.] He lashed out, I was covered with blood. Tiger, I said, what’s that for … he backed away, snarling.

[ANNA is now on her feet, after the tiger.]

DAVE [very excited]: Yeah. That’s it. That’s it. That’s it.

ANNA: He jumped on to my bed and crouched there, lashing his tail. But tiger, I said, I haven’t done anything to you, have I?

DAVE [furious]: Why didn’t you offer him a saucer of milk? Kitty, kitty, have a nice saucer of milk?

ANNA [beside the bed, trying to hold the tiger]: Tiger, don’t go away. But he stared and he glared, and then he was off – down he leaped and out into the street, and off he padded with his yellow eyes gleaming into the shadows of Earls Court. Then I heard the keepers shouting after him and wheeling along a great cage … [She comes back opposite DAVE.] That was the best I could do. I tried hard, but that was the best – a tiger. And I’m covered with scars.

DAVE [gently]: Anna.

[They kneel, foreheads touching, hands together.]

[The telephone starts ringing.]

DAVE: Answer it.

ANNA: No.

DAVE: Is it Tom?

ANNA: Of course it isn’t Tom.

DAVE: Then who?

ANNA: Don’t you really know?

[She goes to answer telephone, it stops ringing. She stands a moment. Then turns to him, fast.]

ANNA: Love me Dave, Love me Dave. Now.

[DAVE rolls her on to the carpet. They roll over and over together. Suddenly she breaks free and begins to laugh.]

DAVE: What’s so funny?

ANNA [kneeling up, mocking]: I’ll tell you what’s funny, Dave Miller. We sit here, tearing ourselves to bits trying to imagine something beautiful and new – but suppose the future is a nice little American college girl all hygienic and virginal and respectable with a baby in her arms. Suppose the baby is what we’re waiting for – a nice, well-fed, well-educated, psycho-analysed superman …

DAVE: Anna, please stop it.

ANNA: But imagine. Anything can come in – tigers, unicorns, monsters, the human being so beautiful he will send all of us into the dust-can. But what does come in is a nice, anxious little girl from Philadelphia.

DAVE: Well Anna?

ANNA: Well Dave?

[A fresh burst of fighting from the street. ANNA moves to shut the window, DAVE holds her.]

DAVE: I’m surprised I have to tell you that anything you shut out because you’re scared of it becomes more dangerous.

ANNA: Yes, but I’ve lived longer than you, and I’m tired.

DAVE: That’s a terrible thing to say.

ANNA: I daresay it is.

END OF ACT TWO

Act Three

ANNA and DAVE in the same positions as at the end of Act Two – no time has passed.

ANNA: Yes, I daresay it is.

[She goes to the light, switches it on, the room is closed in.]

ANNA [as she switches on the light]: I must be mad. I keep trying to forget it’s all over. But it is.

[From the moment ANNA says ‘It’s all over’ it is as if she has turned a switch inside herself. She is going inside herself: she has in fact ‘frozen up on him’. This is from self-protection, and DAVE knows it. Of course he knows by now, or half-knows, and still won’t admit to himself, about JANET. But he is trying to get through to ANNA. He really can’t stand it when she freezes up on him. From now until when Mary comes in should be played fast, wild, angry, mocking: they circle around each other, they do not touch each other.]

[ANNA goes straight from the light switch to the record-player, puts on ‘I’m on My Way’, goes to the bottom of her bed, where she kneels, and shuts Dave out by pretending to work on something.]

DAVE [shouting across music]: Anna. I could kill you. [as she ignores him] … come clean, what have you been really doing in the last weeks to get yourself into such a state?

ANNA [shouting]: I’ve been unhappy, I’ve been so unhappy I could have died.

DAVE: Ah come on, baby.

ANNA: But I can’t say that, can I? To say, You made me unhappy, is to unfairly curtail your freedom?

DAVE: But why the hell do you have to be unhappy?

ANNA: Oh quite so. But I didn’t say it. I’ve been sitting here, calm as a rock, playing ‘I’m on My Way.’

DAVE: Why?

ANNA: It would seem I have the soul of a negro singer.

DAVE: Oh Christ. [He turns off the record player.]

ANNA [too late]: Leave it on.

DAVE: No, I want to talk.

ANNA: All right, talk. [He bangs his fist against the wall.] Or shall I ask you what you’ve been doing in the last few weeks to get yourself into such a state?

[A silence.]

ANNA: Well, talk. [conversational] Strange, isn’t it how the soul of Western man – what may be referred to, loosely, as the soul of Western man, is expressed by negro folk music and the dark rhythms of the … [DAVE leaps up, he begins banging with his fists against the wall.] I’m thinking of writing a very profound article about the soul of Western man as expressed by …

DAVE [banging with his fists]: Shut up.

ANNA: I’m talking. Looked at objectively – yes objectively is certainly the word I’m looking for – what could be more remarkable than the fact that the soul of Western man …

DAVE [turning on her]: You have also, since I saw you last, been engaged to marry Tom Lattimer.

ANNA: Don’t tell me you suddenly care?

DAVE: I’m curious.

ANNA [mocking]: I was in lurve. Like you were.

DAVE: You were going to settle down?

ANNA: That’s right, I decided it was time to settle down.

DAVE: If you’re going to get married you might at least get married on some sort of a level.

ANNA: But Dave, the phrase is, settle down. [she bends over, holds her hand a few inches from the floor] It is no accident, surely, that the phrase is settle down. [DAVE stands watching her, banging the side of his fist against the wall.] I’m thinking of writing a short, pithy, but nevertheless profoundly profound article on the unconscious attitude to marriage revealed in our culture by the phrase settle down.

[DAVE lets his fist drop. Leans casually against the wall, watches her ironically.]

DAVE: Anna, I know you too well.

ANNA: An article summing up – how shall I put it – the contemporary reality.

DAVE: I know you too well.

ANNA: But it seems, not well enough … We’re through Dave Miller. We’re washed up. We’re broken off. We’re finished.

DAVE [with simplicity]: But Anna, you love me.

ANNA: It would seem there are more important things than love.

DAVE [angry]: Lust?

ANNA: Lust? What’s that? Why is it I can say anything complicated to you but never anything simple? I can’t say – you made me unhappy. I can’t say – are you sure you’re not making someone else unhappy. So how shall I put it? Well, it has just occurred to me in the last five minutes that when Prometheus was in his cradle it was probably rocked by the well-manicured hand of some stupid little goose whose highest thought was that the thatch on her hut should be better plaited than the thatch on her neighbour’s hut. Well? Is that indirect enough? After all, it is the essence of the myth that the miraculous baby should not be recognized. And so we are both playing our parts nicely. You because you’re convinced it can’t happen to you. Me because I can’t bear to think about it.

DAVE: Anna, you haven’t let that oaf Tom Lattimer make you pregnant.

ANNA: Oh my God. No. I haven’t. No dear Dave, I’m not pregnant. But perhaps I should be?

DAVE: OK Anna, I’m sorry. I’m sorry I made you unhappy. But – well, here I am Anna.

ANNA: Yes, here you are. [in pain] Dave, you have no right, you have no right … you’re a very careless person, Dave … [She gets off the bed and goes to the window.] What’s the use of talking of rights and wrongs? Or of right or wrong? OK, it’s a jungle. Anything goes. I should have let myself get pregnant. One catches a man by getting pregnant. People like you and me make life too complicated. Back to reality. [looking down] My God, that poor fool is still down there.

DAVE: Anna, don’t freeze up on me.

ANNA: You want to know what I’ve been doing? Well I’ve been standing here at night looking into the street and trying not to think about what you’ve been doing. I’ve been standing here. At about eleven at night the law and the order dissolve. The girls stand at their window there, kissing or quarrelling as the case might be, in between customers. The wolves prowl along the street. Gangs of kids rush by, living in some frightened lonely violent world that they think we don’t understand – ha! So they think we don’t understand what’s driving them crazy? Old people living alone go creeping home, alone. The women who live alone, after an hour of talking to strangers in a pub, go home, alone. And sometimes a married couple or lovers – and they can’t wait to get inside, behind the walls, they can’t wait to lock the doors against this terrible city. And they’re right.

DAVE: They’re not right.

ANNA: Put your arms around one other human being, and let the rest of the world go hang – the world is terrifying, so shut it out. That’s what people are doing everywhere, and perhaps they are right.

DAVE: Anna, say it!

ANNA: All right. You’re an egotist, and egotists can never bear the thought of a new generation. That’s all. And I’m an egotist and what I call my self-respect is more important to me than anything else. And that’s all. There’s nothing new in it. There’s nothing new anywhere. I shall die of boredom. Sometimes at night I look out into the street and I imagine that somewhere is a quiet room, and in the room is a man or a woman, thinking. And quite soon there will be a small new book – a book of one page perhaps, and on the page one small new thought. And we’ll all read it and shout: Yes, yes, that’s it.

DAVE: Such as?

ANNA [mocking]: We must love one another or die, something new like that.

DAVE: Something new like that.

ANNA: But of course it wouldn’t be that at all. It would probably turn out to be a new manifesto headed: Six new rules for egotists, or How to eat your cake and have it.

DAVE: Anna, stop beating us up.

ANNA: Ah hell.

[DAVE puts out a hand to her, drops it on her look.]

DAVE: OK, Anna, have it your way … You’re not even interested in what I’ve been doing since I saw you? You haven’t even asked.

ANNA: The subject, I thought, had been touched on.

DAVE: No, honey, I was being serious. Work, I mean work. I’ve been working. [mocking himself] I’ve been writing a sociological-type article about Britain.

ANNA: So that is what you’ve been doing for the last week. We were wondering.

DAVE [acknowledging the ‘we’]: OK Anna, OK, OK.

ANNA: What am I going to be without you? I get so lonely without you.

DAVE: But baby, I’m here. [at her look] OK Anna. OK.

ANNA: All right, Dave. But all the same … I sometimes think if my skin were taken off I’d be just one enormous bruise. Yes, that’s all I am, just a bruise.

DAVE: Uh-huh.

ANNA: However, comforting myself with my usual sociological-type thought, I don’t see how there can be such pain everywhere without something new growing out of it.

DAVE: Uh-huh.

ANNA [fierce]: Yes!

DAVE: All the same, you’re tough. At a conservative estimate, a hundred times tougher than I am. Why?

ANNA [mocking]: Obviously, I’m a woman, everyone knows we are tough.

DAVE: Uh-huh … I was thinking, when I was away from you, every time I take a beating it gets harder to stand up after-wards. You take punishment and up you get smiling.

ANNA: Oh quite so. Lucky, isn’t it?

DAVE: Tell me, when your husband was killed, did it knock you down?

ANNA: Oh of course not, why should it?

DAVE: OK Anna.

ANNA: Everyone knows that when a marriage ends because the husband is killed fighting heroically for his country the marriage is by definition romantic and beautiful. [at his look] All right, I don’t choose to remember. [at his look] OK, it was a long time ago.

DAVE: Well then, is it because you’ve got that kid?

ANNA [irritated]: Is what because I’ve got that kid. That kid, that kid … You talk about him as if he were a plant in a pot on the windowsill, or a parcel I’ve left lying about somewhere, instead of what my life has been about.

DAVE: Why take men seriously when you’ve got a child?

ANNA [ironic]: Ho-ho, I see.

DAVE: All right then, tell me truthfully, tell me straight, baby, none of the propaganda now, what does it really mean to you to have that kid?

ANNA: But why should you be interested, you’re not going to have children …

DAVE: Come on, Anna, you can’t have it both ways.

ANNA: No.

DAVE: Why not?

ANNA [angry]: Because I can never say anything I think, I feel – it always ends up with what you think, you feel. My God, Dave, sometimes I feel you like a great black shadow over me I’ve got to get away from … oh all right, all right … [She stands, slowly smiles.]

DAVE: Don’t give me that Mona Lisa stuff, I want to know.

ANNA: Well. He sets me free. Yes, that’s it, he sets me free.

DAVE: Why, for God’s sake, you spend your time in savage domesticity whenever he’s within twenty miles of you.

ANNA: Don’t you see? He’s there. I go into his room when he’s asleep to take a good long look at him, because he’s too old now to look at when he’s awake, that’s already an interference. So I look at him. He’s there.

DAVE: He’s there.

ANNA: There he is. He’s something new. A kind of ray of light that shoots off into any direction. Or blazes up like a comet or goes off like a rocket.

DAVE [angry]: Oh don’t tell me, you mean it gives you a sense of power – you look at him and you think – I made that.

ANNA: No, that’s not it. Well, that’s what I said would happen. You asked, I told you, and you don’t believe me.

[She turns her back on him, goes to window. A long wolf-whistle from outside. Another.]

ANNA: Let’s ask him up and tell him the facts of life.

DAVE: Not much point if he hasn’t got fifty shillings.

ANNA: The State is prosperous. He will have fifty shillings.

DAVE: No, let us preserve romance. Let him dream.

[Shouting and quarrelling from the street.]

DAVE [at window with her]: There’s the police.

ANNA: They’re picking up the star-struck hero as well.

DAVE: No mixing of the sexes at the police station so he can go on dreaming of his loved-one from afar even now.

[A noise of something falling on the stairs. Voices. Giggling.]

DAVE: What the hell’s that?

ANNA: It’s Mary.

DAVE: She’s got herself a man? Good for her.

ANNA [distressed and irritable]: No, but she’s going to get herself laid. Well that’s OK with you isn’t it? Nothing wrong with getting oneself laid, according to you.

DAVE: It might be the beginning of something serious for her.

ANNA: Oh quite so. And when you get yourself laid. [conversationally and with malice] It’s odd the way the American male talks of getting himself laid. In the passive. ‘I went out and got myself laid’ what a picture – the poor helpless creature, pursuing his own pure concerns, while the predatory female creeps up behind him and lays him on his back …

DAVE: Don’t get at me because you’re worried about Mary.

[He goes over and puts his ann about her. For a moment, she accepts it.] Who is it?

ANNA: Harry. [MARY and HARRY have arrived outside ANNA’S door. Can be seen as two shadows. One shadow goes upstairs. One shadow remains.] I hope she doesn’t come in.

DAVE: But he shouldn’t be here if Helen’s in a bad way … [as ANNA looks at him] Hell. [He goes across to the mirror, where he stands grimacing at himself.]

[MARY knocks and comes in. She is rather drunk and aggressive.]

MARY: You’re up late aren’t you?

ANNA: Have a good time?

MARY: He’s quite amusing, Harry. [She affects a yawn.] I’m dead. Well, I think I’ll pop off to bed. [looking suspiciously at ANNA] You weren’t waiting up for me, were you?

ANNA [looking across at DAVE]: No.

[MARY sees DAVE, who is draping the black cloth across the mirror.]

MARY: Well, what a stranger. What are you doing? Don’t you like the look of yourself?

DAVE: Not very much. Do you?

MARY: I’ve been talking over old times with Harry.

DAVE: Yes, Anna said.

MARY: I expect you two have been talking over old times too. I must go to bed, I’m dead on my feet. [There is a noise upstairs.] [quickly] That must be the cat. Have you seen the cat?

ANNA: Yes, I suppose it must.

MARY: I was saying to Anna, only today, I’m getting a proper old maid – if a widow can be an old maid, fussing over a cat, well you’d never believe when you were young what you’ll come to.

DAVE: You an old maid – you’ve got enough spunk for a twenty-year-old.

MARY: Yes, Harry was saying, I wouldn’t think you were a day over twenty-five, he said. [to DAVE] Did you know my boy was getting married next week?

DAVE: Yes, I heard.

MARY: He’s got himself a nice girl. But I can’t believe it. It seems only the other day … [There is a bang upstairs. A moment later, a loud miaow outside ANNA’S door.] Why, there’s my pussy cat. [Another crash upstairs.] I must go and see … [She scuttles out. HARRY’S shadow on the stairs.] [putting her head around the door] Isn’t it nice, Harry’s decided to pop back for a cup of coffee. [She shuts the door.]

[ANNA and DAVE, in silence, opposite each other on the carpet. Dance music starts, soft, upstairs.]

ANNA: A good lay, with music.

DAVE: Don’t, baby. If I was fool enough to marry I’d be like Harry.

ANNA: Yes.

DAVE: Don’t hate him.

ANNA: I can make out Harry’s case as well as you. He wanted to be a serious writer, but like a thousand others he’s got high standards and no talent. So he works on a newspaper he despises. He goes home to a wife who doesn’t respect him. So he has to have the little girls to flatter him and make him feel good. OK Dave – but what more do you want? I’ll be back on duty by this evening, pouring out sympathy in great wet gobs and I’ll go on doing it until he finds another little girl who looks at him with gooey eyes and says: oh Harry, oh Dave, you’re so wonderful.

DAVE: It wouldn’t do you any harm to indulge in a bit of flattery from time to time.

ANNA: Oh yes it would. I told you, I’m having the truth with a man or nothing. I watch women buttering up their men, anything for a quiet life and despising them while they do it. It makes me sick.

DAVE: Baby, I pray for the day when you flatter me for just ten seconds.

ANNA: Oh go and get it from – Janet.

[MARY comes in fast, without knocking.]

MARY [she is very aggressive]: Anna, I didn’t like your manner just now. Sometimes there is something in your way I don’t like at all.

[ANNA turns away.]

ANNA: Mary, you’re a little high.

MARY: I’m not. I’m not tight at all. I’ve had practically nothing to drink. And you don’t even listen. I’m serious and you’re not listening. [taking hold of Anna] I’m not going to have it. I’m simply not going to have it.

[HARRY comes in. He is half drunk.]

HARRY: Come on, Mary. I thought you were going to make me some coffee. [MARY bangs ineffectually at ANNA’S shoulder with her fist.] Hey, girls, don’t brawl at this time of night.

MARY: I’m not brawling. [to DAVE] He’s smug too, isn’t he. Like Anna. [to ANNA] And what about you? This afternoon you were still with Tom and now it’s Dave.

HARRY: You’re a pair of great girls.

[ANNA looks in appeal at DAVE.]

DAVE [coming gently to support MARY]: Hey, Mary, come on now.

MARY [clinging to him]: I like you Dave. I always did. When people say to me, that crazy Dave, I always say, I like Dave. I mean, it’s only the crazy people who understand life when you get down to it …

DAVE: That’s right, Mary. [He supports her.]

[HARRY comes and attempts to take MARY’S arm. MARY shakes him off and confronts ANNA.]

MARY: Well Anna, that’s what I wanted to say and I’ve said it.

[HARRY is leading MARY out.]

MARY: The point is, what I mean is.

HARRY: You’ve made your point, come on.

ANNA: See you in the morning, Mary.

MARY: Well I’ve been meaning to say it and I have.

[HARRY and MARY go out, HARRY with a nod and a smile at the other two.]

DAVE: Anna, she’ll have forgotten all about it in the morning.

[He goes to her. She clings to him.]

DAVE: And if she hasn’t, you’ll have to.

ANNA: Oh hell, hell, hell.

DAVE: Yes, I know baby, I know.

ANNA: She’s going to wish she were dead tomorrow morning.

DAVE: Well, it’s not so terrible. You’ll be here and you can pick up the pieces. [He leads her to the bed, and sits by her, his arm around her.] That’s better. I like looking after you. Let’s have six months’ peace and quiet. Let’s have a truce – what do you say?

[The telephone rings. They are both tense, listening. HARRY comes in.]

HARRY: Don’t you answer your telephone, Anna? What’s the matter with you two? [He goes to the telephone to answer it. Sees their faces, stops.] I’m a clod. Of course, it’s Tom.

ANNA: It isn’t Tom.

HARRY: Of course it is. Poor bastard, he’s breaking his heart and here you are dallying with Dave.

ANNA: I know it isn’t.

DAVE: Never argue with Anna when she’s got one of her fits of intuition.

ANNA: Intuition!

HARRY: Mary’s passed clean out. Mary’s in a bad way tonight. Just my luck. I need someone to be nice to me, and all Mary wants is someone to be nice to her.

ANNA: I hope you were.

HARRY: Of course I was.

ANNA: Why don’t you go home to Helen?

HARRY [bluff]: It’s four in the morning. Did you two fools know it’s four in the morning? I’ll tell Helen my troubles tomorrow. Anna, don’t tell me you’re miserable too. [going to her] Is that silly bastard Dave playing you up? It’s a hell of a life. Now I’ll tell you what. I’ll pick you up for lunch tomorrow, I mean today, and I’ll tell you my troubles and you can tell me yours. [to DAVE] You’ve made Anna unhappy, you clod, you idiot.

ANNA: Oh damn it, if you want to play big Daddy why don’t you go home and mop up some of Helen’s tears?

HARRY [bluff]: I don’t have to worry about Helen, I keep telling you.

ANNA: Harry!

HARRY [to DAVE, shouting it]: Clod. Fool … all right, I suppose I’ve got to go home. But it’s not right, Anna. God in his wisdom has ordained that there should be a certain number of understanding women in the world whose task it is to bind up the wounds of warriors like Dave and me. Yes, I’ll admit it, it’s hard on you but – you’re a man’s woman Anna, and that means that when we’re in trouble you can’t be.

ANNA: Thank you, I did understand my role.

[The telephone rings.]

HARRY: He’s a persistent bugger, isn’t he? [He picks up telephone, shouts into it.] Well you’re not to marry him, Anna. Or anyone. Dave and I won’t let you. [He slams receiver back.]

ANNA: Go home. Please go home.

HARRY [for the first time serious]: Anna, you know something? I’m kind Uncle Harry, the world’s soft shoulder for about a thousand people. I make marriages, I patch them up. I give good advice. I dish out aid and comfort. But there’s just one person in the world I can’t be kind to.

ANNA: Helen’s ill.

HARRY: I know she is. I know it. But every time it’s the same thing. I go in, full of good intentions – and then something happens. I don’t know what gets into me … I was looking into the shaving glass this morning, a pretty sight I looked, I was up all last night drinking myself silly because my poppet’s getting married. I looked at myself. You silly sod, I said. You’re fifty this year, and you’re ready to die because of a little girl who … you know, Anna, if she wanted me to cut myself into pieces for her I’d do it? And she looked at me yesterday with those pretty little eyes of hers and she said – primly, she said it, though not without kindness – Harry, do you know what’s wrong with you? You’re at the dangerous age, she said. All men go through it. Oh Christ, Anna, let me take you out and give you a drink tonight. I’ve got to weep on someone’s shoulder. I’d have wept on Mary’s, only all she could say was: ‘Harry, what’s the meaning of life?’ She asks me.

ANNA: Anything you like but for God’s sake go home now.

HARRY: I’m going. Helen will pretend to be asleep. She never says anything. Well I suppose she’s learned there’s not much point in her saying anything, poor bitch.

[He goes. DAVE and ANNA look at each other.]

DAVE: OK Anna. Now let’s have it.

ANNA [in cruel parody]: I’m just a little ordinary girl, what’s wrong with that? I want to be married, what’s wrong with that? I never loved anyone as I loved Dave …

DAVE: No, Anna, not like that.

ANNA [in JANET’S voice, wild with anxiety]: When I knew I was pregnant I was so happy. Yes I know how it looks, trapping a man, but he said he loved me, he said he loved me. I’m five months’ pregnant.

[She stands waiting. DAVE looks at her.]

ANNA: Well haven’t you got anything to say?

DAVE: Did you expect me to fall down at your feet and start grovelling? God Anna, look at you, the mothers of the universe have triumphed, the check’s on the table and Dave Miller’s got to pay the bill, that’s it, isn’t it?

[She says nothing. DAVE laughs.]

ANNA: Funny?

DAVE [with affection]: You’re funny, Anna.

ANNA: It’s not my baby. I’m sorry it isn’t. I wasn’t so intelligent.

DAVE: That’s right. You’ve never got the manacles on me, but Janet has. Now I marry Janet and settle down in the insurance business and live happily ever after, is it that? Is that how you see it? If not, this cat and mouse business all evening doesn’t make sense.

ANNA: And the baby? Just another little casualty in the sex war? She’s a nice respectable middle-class girl, you can’t say to her, have an illegitimate baby, it will be an interesting experience for you – you could have said it to me.

DAVE: Very nice, and very respectable.

ANNA: You said you loved her.

DAVE: Extraordinary. You’re not at all shocked that she lied to me all along the line?

ANNA: You told her you loved her.

DAVE: I’ll admit it’s time I learned to define my terms … you’re worried about Janet’s respectability? If the marriage certificate is what is important to her I’ll give her one. No problems.

ANNA: No problems!

DAVE: I’ll fix it. Anna, you know what? You’ve been using Janet to break off with me because you haven’t the guts to do it for yourself? I don’t come through for you so you punish me by marrying me off to Janet Stevens?

ANNA: OK, then why don’t you come through for me? Here you are, Dave Miller, lecturing women all the time about how they should live – women should be free, they should be independent, etc., etc. None of these dishonest female ruses. But if that’s what you really want what are you doing with Janet Stevens – and all the other Janets? Well? The truth is you can’t take us, you can’t take me. I go through every kind of bloody misery trying to be what you say you want, but …

DAVE: OK, some of the time I can’t take you.

ANNA: And what am I supposed to do when you’re off with the Janets?

DAVE [with confidence]: Well you can always finally kick me out.

ANNA: And in a few months’ time when you’ve got tired of yourself in the role of a father, there’ll be a knock on the door … ‘Hi, Anna, do you love me? Let’s have six months’ peace and quiet, let’s have a truce … ’ and so on, and so on, and so on, and so on …

[The telephone rings.]

DAVE [at telephone]: Hi, Janet. Yeah. OK, baby. OK, I’m on my way. Don’t cry baby. [He puts down receiver.]

[They look at each other.]

DAVE: Well baby?

ANNA: Well?

[He goes out. Now ANNA has a few moments of indecision, of unco-ordination. She begins to cry, but at once stops herself. She goes to the cupboard, brings out Scotch and a glass. She nearly fills the glass with Scotch. With this in her hand she goes to the mirror, carefully drapes the black cloth over it. Goes to the carpet, where she sits as if she were still sitting opposite Dave. The Scotch is on the carpet beside her. She has not drunk any yet. ANNA sits holding herself together, because if she cracked up now, it would be too terrible. She rocks herself a little, perhaps, picks a bit of fluff off her trousers, makes restless, unco-ordinated movements. MARY comes in.]

MARY: I must have fallen asleep. I don’t know what Harry thought, me falling asleep like that … what did you say? I don’t usually … Where’s Dave?

ANNA: He’s gone to get married.

MARY: Oh. Well he was bound to get married some time, wasn’t he?

[Now she looks closely at ANNA for the first time.]

MARY: I must have been pretty drunk. I still am if it comes to that.

[She looks at the glass of Scotch beside Anna, then at the black cloth over the mirror.]

MARY: Hadn’t you better get up?

[MARY goes to the mirror, takes off the black cloth and begins to fold it up. She should do this like a housewife folding a tablecloth, very practical.]

MARY: I suppose some people will never have any more sense than they were born with.

[She lays down the cloth, folded neatly. Now she comes to Anna, takes up the glass of Scotch, and pours it back into the bottle.]

MARY: God only knows how I’m going to get myself to work today, but I suppose I shall.

[She comes and stands over ANNA. ANNA slowly picks herself off the floor and goes to the window.]

MARY: That’s right. Anna, have you forgotten your boy’ll be home in a few days? [as ANNA responds] That’s right. Well we always say we shouldn’t live like this, but we do, don’t we, so what’s the point … [She is now on her way to the door.] I was talking to my boy this morning Twenty-four. He knows everything. What I wouldn’t give to be back at twenty-four, knowing everything …

[MARY goes out. Now ANNA slowly goes towards the bed. As she does so, the city comes up around her, and the curtain comes down.]

THE END

THE SINGING DOOR

CHARACTERS

CHAIRMAN

FIFTH PRECEPT

FOURTH PRECEPT

SECRETARY

GUARDIAN OF THE DOOR

DELEGATES

TWO DISSIDENT DELEGATES

ATTENDANTS

GUARDS

FIRST LOW-LEVELLER

SECOND LOW-LEVELLER

THIRD LOW-LEVELLER

FOURTH LOW-LEVELLER

TWO MEDICAL ASSISTANTS

DOCTOR

ASSISTANT TO GUARDIAN OF THE DOOR

A GROUP OF PEOPLE FROM VARIOUS LEVELS

TWO LATE-COMERS

ASSISTANTS AND HELPERS AT THE ALTAR

TECHNICIAN

The Singing Door

SCENE: Is this a cave? If so, it is a cave into which has been fitted technical equipment. Perhaps it is an underground shelter for time of war? At any rate, this place combines a rawness of earth and rock with advanced gadgetry. This last is piled up at centre back in a way which suggests an altar or a sacred place: computer, radio receiving apparatus, television set, electronic devices – any or all of these. None of these things is working. In the middle of this arrangement is set, in the place of honour, an unattached wooden door. Every item is much garlanded and decorated, but the flowers and greenery are artificial. The altar’s ATTENDANTS are wearing technicians’ uniforms. They are in attitudes of worship, telling beads, muttering mantras, and so on.

At left is a rough rocky exit into the deeper levels of this underground place.

At right is a large door, much more than man-size. It has a look of complicated and manifold function, and seems as if it might be organic, for it is hard to see how the thing is fastened into the rock. There is no jamb, lintel or frame. It seems more as if all that part of the rocky wall is, simply, door. And while it might be of brass, or bronze, or perhaps gold – any metal that by age comes to soften and glisten so that it coaxes and beguiles the eye – it might equally be made of some modern substance, glass, or plastic, or sound waves made visible. A faint humming sound can be heard, but it is more reasonable to assume that such a noise must come from the machines, even though these look dead – just as the eye is first drawn to them, in their central position, and not immediately to the great door, perhaps just because of its size and equivocal substance. Yet, once seen, the great door dominates, although, in contrast to the altar of technical objects, it looks neglected or ignored. The steps leading to it are undecorated.

At right front is a large round table with chairs set round it, glasses of water, scribbling blocks – the paraphernalia of a modem conference. One is in progress. On the breast of each DELEGATE is a large badge with his or her status on it. They have no names. Each wears some sort of uniform, or stiff, formal clothing. The DOCTOR is dressed like a surgeon in an operating theatre. The GUARDIAN OF THE DOOR wears overalls like a mechanic, but he has religious and national symbols pinned or draped on him.

There are ATTENDANTS at the exit, left, and GUARDS behind the chairs of the CHAIRMAN and the GUARDIAN OF THE DOOR.

CHAIRMAN: And that brings us to the end of our agenda. Thank you, all officers. Thank you, delegates.

[People are already beginning to get up, but]

FIFTH PRECEPT: Excuse me, not quite the end.

[CHAIRMAN leafs to the end of his agenda, looks enquiringly at FIFTH PRECEPT, then laughs. So do some of the other.]

FIFTH PRECEPT: I wasn’t joking, sir.

[They sit down again, but they still smile as if at an old joke.]

CHAIRMAN: Fifth Precept, we have been in continuous session for nearly a week.

FOURTH PRECEPT: Or for several hundred years.

CHAIRMAN: Quite, quite. Fourth Precept, I do not think this is the right time for … it makes me nervous when anyone even jokes about time, measurements of time – that sort of thing, when it takes so little to start the bickering and disagreement off again. All very sincere people, very sincere, the historians and time-keepers, but …

FOURTH PRECEPT: I wasn’t joking either, sir.

FIFTH PRECEPT: We would like to have the last item, Item 99, discussed and voted on.

FOURTH PRECEPT: Yes.

CHAIRMAN: When was the last time Item 99 was discussed, Secretary?

SECRETARY [leafing through minutes]: Just a moment. It’s been so long that …

CHAIRMAN: Oh never mind.

FIFTH PRECEPT: It was fifteen years ago.

SECRETARY: Yes. That’s right.

FIFTH PRECEPT: Which was when the problem arose last time.

GUARDIAN OF THE DOOR: There was a great deal of trouble. We had a lot of trouble, I remember.

CHAIRMAN: So I submit it can wait until tomorrow.

GUARDIAN: Or even next week.

[The DELEGATES laugh.]

FIFTH PRECEPT: No. It must be now.

CHAIRMAN: Forgive me, Fifth Precept, but are you feeling well? We are all of us pretty tired, and it is quite understandable …

FIFTH PRECEPT: Quite well, thank you. [he stands up] Exalted Chairman! Guardian of the Door! Fellow Precepts! Delegates! Secretaries! … and so on and so on and so on. If you actually take the trouble to look at the wording of the last item, Item 99 [Some members hurriedly do so.], You’ll see that it reads: ‘In view of the urgency, it is decided that full mobilization is called at once. The Door is expected to open at hour zero.’ Very shortly, in fact. [There is general discreet amusement.] A great many people are expecting it.

CHAIRMAN: You know quite well that some nut is always announcing the Opening of that Door.

SECRETARY: Which is why we have Item 99 permanently on the Agenda, to take care of it.

FIFTH PRECEPT: Yet we all believe that the Door will open some time. And that when it does we can leave this place.

DELEGATE: Of course we do.

DELEGATE: Of course.

CHAIRMAN: If there had been any indication from Centre [he indicates the machines and their worshippers] we would have been told.

FIFTH PRECEPT: Our life in this place is entirely organized around our expectation of this Opening. If we didn’t believe that we would one day escape, that our people would one day reach the open air and the light-of-day …

DELEGATE: Whatever they may be!

FIFTH PRECEPT: … the light-of-day, it would not be possible to sustain life here.

DELEGATE: Hear, hear.

SECRETARY: Article 17 of our Declaration of Faith. Very fine, but is a conference the right place for this sort of thing?

GUARDIAN: As First Guardian of the Door I must protest against the tone of our Secretary.

SECRETARY: Sorry, Guardian. [as GUARDIAN does not relent, he recites] I offer my thoughts, being and intentions in total apology for blasphemy. Unintentional blasphemy atonable for by simple-form apology.

GUARDIAN: Simple-form apology accepted with warning.

CHAIRMAN: Can we get on? I adjourn the conference until tomorrow.

FIFTH PRECEPT: I object.

CHAIRMAN: Overruled.

FIFTH PRECEPT: According to. Rule 954 I have the right to insist.

CHAIRMAN: Wait a minute. [he and SECRETARY consult the rules] I see. Very well then – you’re ill. You must be. I’ve never been more upset to see a colleague of mine fall under the weight of duty. You’d better take leave. From this evening.

FOURTH PRECEPT: And must I join him?

CHAIRMAN: Oh no, it’s too much … when two of this, the highest body of our people, fall victim to … yes, both of you, take a month’s leave.

A DELEGATE WHO HAS NOT YET SPOKEN: And me too?

[FOURTH AND FIFTH PRECEPTS look at him in surprise, then at each other.]

ANOTHER DELEGATE: And me?

[FOURTH AND FIFTH PRECEPTS and the last speaker are surprised.]

CHAIRMAN: Four of you. I see. I don’t know why I didn’t see it before – this is obviously yet another attempt from the Low-Levellers to take over. Obviously.

[FOURTH AND FIFTH PRECEPTS and their two supporters laugh.]

FIFTH PRECEPT: As soon as the Low-Levellers come into it, that’s the end of all reason.

CHAIRMAN: We all know that you represent the Low-Levellers, that you work for their interests, that you improve their conditions – and of course, we all honour you for it.

FIFTH PRECEPT: Really? I hadn’t noticed it.

CHAIRMAN: Of course, without reformers there’s no progress. But. The Low-Levellers always overstep the mark sooner or later. We know that too, and expect it.

FOURTH PRECEPT: And make provision for it by putting under the last item of every agenda their requests, reasonable or otherwise, about the Door.

CHAIRMAN: I am glad you can admit they are sometimes unreasonable.

FIFTH PRECEPT: I and Fourth Precept assure you that this has nothing to do with the Low-Levellers.

THE TWO DELEGATES WHO SUPPORT THEM: Nothing. Nothing at all.

A DELEGATE: May we then ask who inspired your conviction that the Door is about to open?

FIFTH PRECEPT: For one thing, look at it.

[They turn to look at the door in the middle of the stack of machinery.]

CHAIRMAN: Well?

A DELEGATE: It has never changed since I first saw it.

ANOTHER: My father served on this committee and he said it never altered in his lifetime.

FIFTH PRECEPT: Not that Door. The other one.

A DELEGATE: What Door?

ANOTHER: What other Door?

CHAIRMAN: As you two are new on this committee, you may not know that certain deviant and of course unimportant sects have always maintained that the real Door is that one. [He nods at the Door, right. The GUARDIAN coughs.] I apologize.

GUARDIAN: It is not your fault these heresies continue.

DELEGATE: Funny, I never even noticed it.

GUARDIAN: Which is not surprising.

FOURTH PRECEPT: It is easily overlooked.

FIFTH PRECEPT: Until you have seen it – but then some people find it hard to look at anything else.

ONE WHO STARES AT THE ALTAR: Why, it isn’t even attached to anything. It doesn’t lead anywhere.

ANOTHER: It isn’t anything at all.

GUARDIAN [on his feet and obviously about to launch into an oration]: My children, in this unfortunate time, let us all take heart and …

CHAIRMAN: Quite so, oh quite so, Guardian, but perhaps I should deal with this? [GUARDIAN seats himself again] Secretary, have you file Number 7? [SECRETARY hands over file 7] Last week, our investigators found evidence of a new subversive cult and …

FIFTH PRECEPT: You mean, our spies.

CHAIRMAN: If you like. But there is unrest. Serious unrest.

[There is noise beyond the left opening. One of the ATTENDANTS comes running to the conference table.]

ATTENDANT: Some of them insist on coming in.

CHAIRMAN: You have forgotten something, I think?

ATTENDANT: Second Hereditary Attendant to the Gate to the First Level. Some of them insist on coming in.

CHAIRMAN: They can wait until tomorrow.

[A second ATTENDANT runs over.]

THIS ATTENDANT: First Hereditary Attendant. They’ve got hand-grenades.

CHAIRMAN: I knew it. [to a GUARD] Arrest the Fourth and Fifth Precepts.

FIFTH PRECEPT: You haven’t the authority.

CHAIRMAN: Haven’t I!

SECRETARY: Precepts cannot be arrested without a week’s full notice and then only after having posted …

CHAIRMAN: Oh never mind. Doctor – Precept Doctor?

[DOCTOR stands up.]

FIFTH PRECEPT: There’s no appeal against that.

CHAIRMAN: No.

[The DOCTOR takes FOURTH and FIFTH PRECEPTS over to right. He claps his hands. Two white-overalled MEDICAL ASSISTANTS come running from left with a rolled stretcher, bottles of pills, a syringe. All the DELEGATES are watching these arrangements. The two who supported FOURTH and FIFTH PRECEPTS rise and go over and join them.]

SECRETARY: Heroic!

CHAIRMAN: But futile.

FIRST HEREDITARY ATTENDANT: Exalted Chairman, they give us five minutes. They have the pins out of their grenades.

CHAIRMAN: We bow to force. Let them in.

[Two LOW-LEVELLERS come in. They are dressed in sweaters and jeans, have long hair, carry grenades.]

CHAIRMAN: Who are you?

FIRST LOW-LEVELLER: That doesn’t matter.

CHAIRMAN: We must know with whom we are dealing.

SECOND LOW-LEVELLER: We are from Level 56.

[Munnurs of shock and surprise from the DELEGATES.]

FIRST LOW-LEVELLER: Yes, this is the first time any one of you have set eyes on Level 56-ers, isn’t it?

CHAIRMAN: Your status?

SECOND LOW-LEVELLER: Oh tell them, if it keeps them happy.

FIRST LOW-LEVELLER: Officer First Class, Second Subsidiary Grade.

SECOND LOW-LEVELLER: Officer First Class, Second Subsidiary Grade.

FIRST LOW-LEVELLER: Elected officers.

CHAIRMAN: Impossible.

SECRETARY: Sir, there was that revolution last month in the Intermediate City.

CHAIRMAN [affable]: Ah, so you are the leaders of the successful coup in the Intermediate City?

FIRST LOW-LEVELLER: You can put it like that if you can’t, understand it any other way.

[From the left comes a muffled shout.]

We have no leaders!

[Some more LOW-LEVELLERS come into view, trying to force their way past the ATTENDANTS. FIRST and SECOND LOW-LEVELLERS turn so that they are able simultaneously to keep the DELEGATES controlled with their hand-grenades, and watch the entrance left. THIRD and FOURTH LOW-LEVELLERS burst in, with rifles. They are wearing a lot of leather, and have short hair.]

THIRD LOW-LEVELLER: It is no use trying to keep us out.

CHAIRMAN: Very well, I suppose there is nothing for it. I declare the conference reopened, for discussion on Item 99. Will you please all be seated?

FOURTH LOW-LEVELLER: A committee! Would you believe it!

FIRST LOW-LEVELLER: We might have known it.

SECOND LOW-LEVELLER: I’m not wasting my time talking.

THIRD LOW-LEVELLER: I’ll give you exactly three minutes.

FOURTH LOW-LEVELLER: And don’t imagine we wouldn’t use them.

CHAIRMAN: You don’t want to discuss Item 99?

FIRST LOW-LEVELLER: We don’t want to discuss anything.

GUARDIAN: What do you want then?

SECOND LOW-LEVELLER: To have full representation in the celebrations tomorrow.

THIRD LOW-LEVELLER: The Ceremony of the Garlanding of the Door.

CHAIRMAN: I’d almost forgotten about that. We have a rehearsal in a few minutes, haven’t we?

GUARDIAN: Do you mind repeating that? You have forced your way in here because you want representation for Level 56 in the Garlanding Ceremony?

THIRD LOW-LEVELLER: Not only 56. All the levels beyond that too.

CHAIRMAN: But it’s not physically possible to have representatives from all the hundred levels. That was why it was arranged by the First Ones that the levels from 1 to 50 should represent 50 to 100.

GUARDIAN: But after all, we haven’t been faced with fifty extra people, only four.

FOURTH LOW-LEVELLER: It was never anything but a disgustingly unfair arrangement.

CHAIRMAN: Yet I see that you and your friend are happy to represent all the levels beyond 56. Isn’t that so?

FIFTH PRECEPT: Exalted Chairman, may I remind you that we are placed here because you decided that we were part of this – demand?

A DELEGATE: Conspiracy!

ANOTHER DELEGATE: Undemocratic and violent overthrow of Constitutional Government!

CHAIRMAN: Well well, I don’t know. Perhaps we of the upper levels have got a bit stuffy. I see no reason at all why Level 56 shouldn’t be represented at the ceremony. And they may start by joining us in the rehearsal.

FIFTH PRECEPT: Just a minute. We were arrested because you believed us to be party to this demand, or conspiracy.

CHAIRMAN: You haven’t been arrested.

FIFTH PRECEPT: Thank you.

[He and the other three attempt to leave the group of DOCTOR and MEDICAL ATTENDANTS, but they are forcibly restrained.]

FOURTH PRECEPT: We are being wrongfully held. On two counts. One, we knew nothing about this conspiracy. Two, it is now apparently not considered a conspiracy.

CHAIRMAN: Precept Doctor, we have not yet had your report.

FOURTH PRECEPT: There is no need of any report. We are all perfectly well.

DOCTOR: Of course this is only a provisional diagnosis, but in my opinion these patients are not fit to leave medical care.

FIFTH PRECEPT: We aren’t patients.

DOCTOR: There. Come now. Relax. Take these pills. You are getting over-excited.

[The two PRECEPTS, then the other two refuse the pills, as the DOCTOR threatens force.]

FIRST LOW-LEVELLER: What’s wrong with them? Who are they?

CHAIRMAN: You mean you don’t even know your champions? Those are the famous Fighting Precepts.

FIRST LOW-LEVELLER: Champions!

SECOND LOW-LEVELLER: I think I’ve seen their pictures.

THIRD LOW-LEVELLER: Liberals!

FOURTH LOW-LEVELLER: Vacillating temporizers!

FIRST LOW-LEVELLER: Compromising timeservers!

CHAIRMAN: Well, well. And these are the people you have been fighting for.

FIRST LOW-LEVELLER: But what’s wrong with them?

FIFTH PRECEPT: We are under medical care because we insist on discussing Item 99. Tonight.

SECOND LOW-LEVELLER: Never heard of it.

FIFTH PRECEPT: The Door is going to open. It is going to open.

THIRD LOW-LEVELLER: Oh I see, they’re nuts.

GUARDIAN: I do so hope that you young people are not unbelievers. For while I deprecate the emotional extravagance and wrongheadedness of officers like the Fourth and Fifth Precepts, I find it in my heart to prefer that to total nullity.

FIFTH PRECEPT: But it is going to open.

FIRST LOW-LEVELLER: Well, of course it is. Who said it wasn’t?

SECOND LOW-LEVELLER: We’ve all been taught that in school.

THIRD LOW-LEVELLER: Whether we liked it or not.

FOURTH LOW-LEVELLER: I didn’t mind the Door lessons. I love those old myths.

GUARDIAN: Myths, indeed! Then why do you want to take part in the Door Ceremony?

FOURTH LOW-LEVELLER: It is a question of political equity.

FIRST LOW-LEVELLER: Justice.

SECOND LOW-LEVELLER: Liberty.

THIRD LOW-LEVELLER: Freedom.

FIFTH PRECEPT: But it will open. The Door will open. [shouting] Let me go. I must be free to tell everybody. I must …

[The MEDICAL ATTENDANTS grab him. The DOCTOR deftly injects him, an ATTENDANT crams pills into his mouth. He passes out, and is laid on the stretcher. The DOCTOR tries to inject the FOURTH PRECEPT, who mimes submission, contrition, humility. As this is seen to work, the DOCTOR becoming avuncular and bland, the other two copy the FOURTH PRECEPT. Meanwhile FOURTH PRECEPT goes forward a little way to examine the big Door. He is joined by the two who have now mollified the DOCTOR. Do we imagine it, or is this Door brighter than it was?]

THIRD LOW-LEVELLER: There have been a lot of pretty funny rumours down in the Levels recently.

CHAIRMAN: I would hardly describe a revolution as a rumour.

FIRST LOW-LEVELLER: No, about the Door. Rumours about the Door.

SECOND LOW-LEVELLER: More than rumours. There’s a new sect.

THIRD LOW-LEVELLER: The main one calls itself ‘The Door Will Open Soon’ Society.

GUARDIAN: Indeed?

SECOND LOW-LEVELLER: There’s been some rioting.

GUARDIAN: Very true. I had them arrested and imprisoned.

THIRD LOW-LEVELLER: I heard some escaped. We thought they might be here.

[FIRST and SECOND LOW-LEVELLERS look suspiciously at THIRD and FOURTH LOW-LEVELLERS, while moving closer together. THIRD and FOURTH do the same. At the same moment, the two couples aim their grenades and their rifles at each other.]

CHAIRMAN: Now, now. There’s no need for that.

[A fresh commotion outside left exit. ATTENDANT comes running over.]

ATTENDANT: Second Hereditary Attendant of the Gate to the …

CHAIRMAN: Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

ATTENDANT: There’s another lot.

CHAIRMAN: Then let them in, by all means.

[This time there is a group of varying ages, and variously dressed. They are unarmed, and they walk quietly.]

CHAIRMAN: Delighted to see you all.

GUARDIAN: Do come in.

SECRETARY: You are more than welcome.

DELEGATES: Hear, hear. Yes. Of course. Welcome.

ONE OF THE GROUP: Oh, I’m so glad. We thought we might not believe it.

CHAIRMAN: No, no, we think every Level should be represented. Every one, mark you, including Levels 50 to 100. You will all be welcome at the Ceremony. And indeed, we were just about to start the rehearsal for tomorrow.

GUARDIAN: And it is time to start. Do join us.

[He stands facing the pile of machinery, as if heading a procession. The DELEGATES and officers start forming behind him.]

ONE OF THE GROUP: But why does there have to be a Ceremony? Aren’t we just going to walk right out?

[This person, then others of the group, look at the Door propped up on the altar, look at each other, shake their heads, then start looking around. One sees the big Door right, indicates it to the others. This group moves over towards it.]

CHAIRMAN: Doctor, you have some more patients.

FOURTH PRECEPT: I’m glad you made it. But be quiet. Don’t argue. Don’t fight.

[This new group, the FOURTH PRECEPT, his two allies, are now close to the big Door. It is hard now to doubt that it is brighter. And surely the humming sound is louder.]

FIRST LOW-LEVELLER: I’ve never seen any of that lot before.

THIRD LOW-LEVELLER: I wonder what Level they are from?

ONE OF THE NEW GROUP: We come from all the Levels. Not just from one.

FOURTH LOW-LEVELLER: Are you from ‘The Door Will Open Soon’ Society?

ANOTHER OF THE NEW GROUP: From all the societies.

ANOTHER: Or from none.

GUARDIAN: Shouldn’t we be getting on? Chairman?

CHAIRMAN: Of course. Assistant to the Guardian of the Door …

[One of the DELEGATES whose function this is starts shepherding members of the Conference, and the LOW-LEVELLERS, into a neater line behind the GUARDIAN. He hands them garlands of plastic and paper flower.]

GUARDIAN: I’ll just run through my opening lines. [as if delivering a sennon, but rather fast] Many thousands of years ago, no one knows how many, a natural disaster or a war sealed us in this Under Place. We understand from the old records that a few survivors, known to us as The First People, laid the basis of this our society, excavating the First Level of the Under City. Water supplies were discovered and ensured, and the cultivation of mushrooms, our staple food, begun. The Sacred Machines were placed here, at the gate of the Outside, for it was revealed to the First People that it will be the Sacred Machines which will announce to the Door the moment it must open … Etcetera and so on.

A DELEGATE: Lovely old stuff, isn’t it?

ANOTHER: I’ve done this so often I could do it in my sleep.

ANOTHER: If the Door did actually open some of us would get the shock of our lives.

ANOTHER: We take it for granted there is something outside.

ANOTHER: Speak for yourself. I, for my part, am quite sure there is not.

ANOTHER: My attitude is that since we don’t know, we should keep an open mind.

ANOTHER: Then why are you in this Ceremony at all? It is just hypocrisy.

CHAIRMAN: Nonsense, it is part of our ethic. Part of the fabric of our society.

DELEGATE: It does no harm and it may do some good.

SECRETARY: Refusing to take part in the Ceremony creates a disturbance. It is anti-social. It just draws attention to yourself, that’s all.

GUARDIAN: Your reasons for being here are not important. There are many paths to the Door. [to his ASSISTANT] The regalia?

ASSISTANT: Here. [He hands GUARDIAN the regalia, and assists him – a plastic smock with silver lightning flashes, a mitre, a small transistor radio in one hand, a telephone in the other. The latter is a child’s toy, in a bright colour.]

GUARDIAN: I think that’s all. Assistant?

ASSISTANT: Lights. Lights. Turn down the lights.

[A TECHNICIAN vainly clicks switches on the side of the computer.]

TECHNICIAN: Sorry, but they don’t seem to work. I’ve turned off the usual number of lights but it is no darker.

FOURTH PRECEPT: Look at the Door.

A MEDICAL ATTENDANT: It’s much brighter.

DOCTOR: It’s an optical illusion.

[But now there is no doubt that the Door is brighter.]

ONE OF THE NEW GROUP: It’s getting brighter all the time.

GUARDIAN: Well, never mind. I’m sure the technicians will get everything right in time.

ANOTHER OF THE NEW GROUP: ‘Wait and watch for the sudden time,

The song that’s bright,

The singing light.’

[ASSISTANT TO THE GUARDIAN tries to push FIRST and SECOND LOW-LEVELLERS to the back of the procession. They resist. He tries with the THIRD and FOURTH LOW-LEVELLERS.]

FIRST LOW-LEVELLER: You don’t seem to have got the point. Those days are over.

ASSISTANT: Everyone has to go where he is allocated.

FOURTH LOW-LEVELLER: No. Take your hands off.

CHAIRMAN: Move up here, behind me. We have got the point, I assure you.

[ASSISTANT pushes FIRST and SECOND LOW-LEVELLERS up to the head of the procession behind GUARDIAN.]

THIRD LOW-LEVELLER: Very nice.

ASSISTANT: You can’t all four be up at the front.

GUARDIAN: Of course they can. The youth are our most precious possession, the gold of our future. Let them come.

[ASSISTANT pushes THIRD and FOURTH into the procession behind FIRST and SECOND LOW-LEVELLERS.]

THIRD LOW-LEVELLER: I’m sorry, but our status is just as relevant as their status.

FOURTH LOW-LEVELLER: It’s not fair to those we represent.

ASSISTANT [to FIRST and SECOND LOW-LEVELLERS]: I am sure you are much too mature to mind. [He pushes THIRD and FOURTH in front of them.]

FIRST LOW-LEVELLER: No, I’m sorry. That won’t do.

SECOND LOW-LEVELLER: It’s the principle of the thing.

A DELEGATE: What is that noise?

[All now look at the big Door, now glowing brilliantly. But is it responsible for that soft deep note?]

THE SAME DELEGATE: Remember the old saying:

‘When the Door begins to sing,

That’s a sign of coming spring.’

GUARDIAN: We all know these old tales. But remember, there is no agreement about their origin.

ONE OF THE NEW GROUP: The First People left them for us as a signpost.

A DELEGATE: No. My father, and he was an expert in the field, said they were anonymous. They come spontaneously from the populace.

A DELEGATE: What is spring?

ANOTHER: They say that Outside it is beautiful in spring.

ANOTHER: What is beautiful? We all use the word, but what does it mean?

ANOTHER: Anything gets called beautiful.

ANOTHER: It was flowers and leaves. [holding up some paper flowers] Like this.

GUARDIAN: We have flowers and leaves.

THE DELEGATE WITH THE FATHER: My father said spring was a metaphor.

ANOTHER: My grandfather who was an expert said that flowers and leaves Outside are not like this, they are made of flesh.

THE DELEGATES, VARIOUSLY: Oh how disgusting. Revolting. Horrible. Repulsive. Ugh!

DELEGATE WITH THE GRANDFATHER: My grandfather had the theory that the word spring meant when Outside was covered all over with live tissue in different colours. You know, like our flesh, but different.

A DELEGATE [shuddering]: Like a sort of cancer.

DELEGATE: That would take a lot of getting used to for a start.

ANOTHER: That’s what I’ve always said. I mean, we take it for granted that Outside would be better than here. But, ugh, flowers and leaves made of flesh, living flowers and leaves, I mean to say. [He looks as if he is going to be sick.]

FIRST LOW-LEVELLER: My father spent all his life studying the old sayings. His version of the spring verse is quite different.

SECRETARY: You have scholarship down on the Lower Levels? Yes, yes of course you do …

[SECRETARY exchanges a tolerant grimace with the CHAIRMAN.]

FIRST LOW-LEVELLER: He said it should go:

‘The Door will sing,

Then through it spring.’

THIRD LOW-LEVELLER: I like the other one better.

FIRST LOW-LEVELLER: Here, you two can’t stay there. You can’t be in front of us. I don’t care for myself but it is an insult to the 56th Level.

FOURTH LOW-LEVELLER: We aren’t moving back and that’s final.

CHAIRMAN: I do hope you will forgive me intruding, but I have a suggestion. You can’t have been Hereditary Exalted Chairman all your life without learning something of the arts of compromise. [He whispers to ASSISTANT.]

ASSISTANT: You move there … [He pushes FIRST LOW-LEVELLER with FOURTH.] … and you there … [He pushes THIRD with SECOND.]

[There is violent scuffling and disorder.]

FIRST LOW-LEVELLER: I’m not going to be with him. Look at his hair, if there wasn’t anything else wrong.

THIRD LOW-LEVELLER: He makes me sick.

THE DELEGATE WHO COMPLAINED OF THE NOISE BEFORE: I’m sorry but I can’t stand it. I have always been sensitive to noise. [This one runs out, left, hands clapped to ears.]

[The Door, glowing brilliantly, is sending out a strong sweet sound.]

FOURTH PRECEPT: ‘The Door will sing.’

ONE OF THIS GROUP: ‘The Door is singing, chanting, ringing,

The Door is shining, burning clear,

Leave your prison, the time is here!’

DELEGATE WHOSE FATHER WAS AN EXPERT: That’s not the right version. I’m sorry.

ANOTHER FROM THE GROUP: ‘The Door will glow, It’s time to go.’

SAME DELEGATE: No, that’s wrong.

ANOTHER: No, it isn’t, I’ve heard that version often.

[A babble of quarrelling breaks out in the procession. At the same time, all the group near the door, including the DOCTOR and MEDICAL ATTENDANTS, press closer to it. The ATTENDANTS, at a sign from FOURTH PRECEPT, pick up the stretcher with FIFTH PRECEPT.]

GUARDIAN [taking command of the procession]: This is a procession of Peace. Peace, I tell you.

FIRST LOW-LEVELLER [grabbing SECOND LOW-LEVELLER and pulling him beside himself]: You belong here.

GUARDIAN: Arrest the Low-Levellers.

[GUARDS come forward to arrest them, but the four LOW-LEVELLERS spring out of the procession and stand in a group facing the GUARDS, weapons at ready.]

FIRST LOW-LEVELLER: We’ll blow the whole place up.

FOURTH LOW-LEVELLER: And don’t think we don’t mean it.

DOCTOR: This must be a mass hallucination. It’s hypnosis. It’s a trick.

[The Door is now a flood of brilliant light, while from it comes a beautiful deep note.]

ONE OF THIS GROUP: ‘The atoms dance,

The Door’s on fire,

The electrons sing,

Now seize your chance.’

ANOTHER: ‘Watch and wait,

Know the time,

A singing Door,

That’s the sign.’

FOURTH PRECEPT: Come on. [He signals the MEDICAL ATTENDANTS to the Door.]

DOCTOR: Stop.

[The MEDICAL ATTENDANTS stop with the stretcher at the Door. All this group press up close, almost touching the Door. The DOCTOR hangs back a little, but he is being drawn slowly forward.]

GUARDIAN: In the name of the Door I command you to disarm.

FIRST LOW-LEVELLER: Silly old fools. Scared. Like a lot of sheep.

SECRETARY: Not sheep. Ship. Scared like a lot of ship. Ship, plural of sheep.

SECOND LOW-LEVELLER: What’s a sheep anyway? What’s it matter?

SECRETARY: It matters very much. We must preserve standards. When we do eventually leave this Underplace and go out again, into Outside, then we’ll need to know these things.

FOURTH LOW-LEVELLER: We don’t even know what the Door is for. It’s just there.

[He rushes over and kicks the Door on the altar.]

THIRD LOW-LEVELLER: There, you see? Nothing happens. [He kicks the Door too. Stands defying it.] Go on, punish me then!

FOURTH PRECEPT: ‘A singing Door, That’s the time … ’

[He walks into the blaze of the Door and disappears. The others of that group follow, the MEDICAL ATTENDANTS taking the stretcher through last.]

DOCTOR: I must be mad!

[He goes into the Door like the others. A couple of people rush across from the left, ignoring the procession, going straight to the Door.]

THESE SHOUT: Are we too late?

[They jump into the light and vanish.]

FOURTH LOW-LEVELLER: Did you see that? Did you?

[He rushes across and jumps into the light. FIRST LOW-LEVELLER does the same. One of the GUARDS goes after him. But are we imagining it, or is the light slightly less, the deep note a little higher and fainter?]

GUARDIAN [he has noticed nothing]: As Guardian of the Door, I command you, finally, to submit to me.

CHAIRMAN: As Exalted Chairman I order you to give yourselves up.

GUARDIAN’S ASSISTANT: According to Regulation 37d you have no alternative but to disarm.

SECOND LOW-LEVELLER: Silly old ships.

[He throws his grenade at the computer. It explodes in smoke and flying fragments. There is indiscriminate scuffling, shouting.

The Door is now fading rapidly, and the sound is nearly back to its normal low humming.

Order is being restored over by the altar. SECOND and THIRD LOW-LEVELLERS are disarmed and under arrest. A delegate lies dead.]

CHAIRMAN: That’s over. We didn’t allow ourselves to be intimidated.

GUARDIAN: I’m delighted to see that my authority still has force. And now I must make a plea for clemency.

CHAIRMAN: Of course, they were misguided, that’s all. And perhaps we were not without faults ourselves. We are perhaps too ignorant of what goes on in the Levels below 50.

DELEGATES: Hear, hear.

CHAIRMAN: I move that we appoint a commission to investigate ways and means to strengthen our ties with the levels below 50.

ASSISTANT TO GUARDIAN: But where are the other two Low-Levellers?

DELEGATE: When it came to the point, they got scared!

CHAIRMAN: Doctor, take these two young people into your care, will you? I am sure you don’t mind a couple of extra patients … Where is the Doctor? Where have they all gone?

A DELEGATE: I saw them all run through the light. I mean, through the Door. They ran through the singing … I saw them.

CHAIRMAN: You saw what?

THIS DELEGATE: I saw them. I saw what happened. They’ve escaped! They’ve got out. They’ve left this Underplace for Outside! [He runs to the Door and beats his hands on it, trying to press himself through.] They are free, I tell you. Free, free, free!

CHAIRMAN: Guard, take this poor man to the hospital … where’s the other guard? Oh never mind. And the two Low-Levellers as well.

[GUARD takes this DELEGATE, and two LOW-LEVELLERS out left.]

THIS DELEGATE: But I did see it. I did. Oh why was I such a fool? Why did I forget? … [he recites as he is pulled out of sight]

‘If you miss the place and time,

The Door again will sing and shine.’

THE DELEGATE WITH THE FATHER: That’s not how that goes. It should go like this:

‘The song was sung,

The moment’s gone,

Light and sound together came,

Those who did not catch the time,

Must watch until it comes again.’

THE DELEGATE WITH THE GRANDFATHER: That’s not the way my grandfather knew it … He said it should go like …

CHAIRMAN: Another time, please. Is everyone ready now?

[He takes his place beside the GUARDIAN. The ASSISTANT TO THE GUARDIAN hands them both garlands, hangs more around their necks. Some music starts up.]

ASSISTANT: Lights down please.

[The TECHNICIANS turn down the lights. The Door can be seen glowing faintly in the half dark.]

CHAIRMAN: There you are, the technicians have got the lighting right – I said they would.

EACH HIS OWN WILDERNESS

This play was first presented by The English Stage Society, at The Royal Court Theatre, London, on 23 March 1958, with the following cast:

TONY BOLTON | Colin Jeavons
MYRA BOLTON | Valerie Taylor
SANDY BOLES | Philip Bond
MIKE FERRIS | Vernon Smythe
PHILIP DURRANT | Ewen MacDuff
ROSEMARY | Sarah Preston
MILLY BOLES | Patricia Burke

Directed by John Dexter

The action takes place in the hall of Myra Bolton’s house in London.

CHARACTERS

MYRA BOLTON: A middle-aged woman.

TONY BOLTON: Her son, aged 22.

MILLY BOLES: A middle-aged woman, Myra’s friend.

SANDY BOLES: Milly’s son, aged 22.

MIKE FERRIS: An elderly Left Wing politician.

PHILIP DURRANT: A middle-aged architect.

ROSEMARY: A young girl engaged to Philip.

Act One

SCENE I

Before the curtain rises, an H-bomb explosion. CURTAIN UP on the sound of blast. Silence. Machine-gun fire. The explosion again. These sounds come from a tape-recording machine which has been left running. This is the hall of MYRA BOLTON’S house in London, stairs ascending L back. Door L into living-room. Door R which is entrance from street. Window R looking into garden at front of the house.

The essential furniture is a divan close to the foot of the stairs. A cupboard in the wall. A mirror. Odd chairs. A small radio.

Everything is extremely untidy: there are files, piles of newspapers, including the New Statesman, posters lying about inscribed BAN THE BOMB, WE WANT LIFE NOT DEATH, etc. A typewriter on the floor. The radio is playing tea-room music behind the war-noises from the tape-recorder.

After the second explosion TONY BOLTON comes in R. He is in Army uniform and has this day finished his Army service. He is a dark, lightly built, rather graceful youth, attractive and aware of it, but uneasy and on the defensive in the same way and for the same reasons as an adolescent girl who makes herself attractive as a form of self-assertion but is afraid when the attention she draws is more than gently chivalrous. His concern for his appearance is also due to the longing for the forms of order common to people who have never known order. He is at bottom deeply uneasy, tense and anxious, fluctuating between the good manners of those who use manners as a defence, the abrupt rudeness of the very young, and a plaintive, almost querulous appeal.

He stands looking at the disorder in the room, first ironically and then with irritation. As the music reaches a climax of bathos, he rushes to the radio and turns it off.

TONY: What a mess. God, what a mess!

[The sound of an H-bomb explosion gathering strength on the tape recorder. He turns to stare, appalled. Listens. Switches it off at explosion. There is a sudden complete silence. TONY breathes it in. He passes his hands over his hair, his eyes. He opens his eyes. He is staring at the window. Sunlight streams across the floor. He dives at the window, draws the curtains, making a half-dark, goes to the divan, lets himself fall limp across it. A moment’s complete silence. The telephone rings.]

[querulously] Oh, no, no, no. [leaps up, goes to telephone] Yes. It’s me, Tony. No, I’m not on leave. I don’t know where my mother is. I haven’t seen her yet. Yes, Philip. I’ll tell her. Who did you say? Who’s Rosemary? OK. [lets receiver fall back and returns to the divan, where he lies as before, eyes closed] [MYRA’S VOICE upstairs, singing: Boohoo, you’ve got me crying for you.]

MYRA’S VOICE: Where are you, darling? [continues singing].

[She comes into sight at the head of the stairs. A good-looking woman of about 45 or 50, and at the moment looking her age. She is wearing bagged trousers and a sweat-shirt. She peers down into the half-lit hall from the top of the stairs, and slowly comes down.]

TONY [languidly]: Well, Mother, how are you?

MYRA: Tony! You might have let me know. [She rushes at the window, pulls back the curtains, turns to look at him, the sunlight behind her.]

TONY [shading his eyes]: Do we have to have that glare?

MYRA: Have you got leave?

TONY [without moving]: I didn’t imagine it was necessary to remind you of the date my National Service finished.

MYRA: Oh, I see.

TONY: But, of course, if my coming is in any way inconvenient to you, I’ll go away again.

MYRA [stares and then laughs]: Oh, Tony … [rushes across at him] Come on, get up out of that sofa.

[He does not move. Then he languidly rises. She impulsively embraces him. He allows himself to be embraced. Then he kisses her gracefully on the cheek.]

MYRA: Ohhh! What an iceberg! [laughs, holding him by the arms] [Suddenly he convulsively embraces her and at once pulls away.] Oh, darling, it is lovely to have you home. We must have a party to celebrate.

TONY: Oh, no.

MYRA: What’s the matter?

TONY: A party. I knew you’d say a party.

MYRA: Oh, very well. [examining him, suddenly irritated] For God’s sake get out of that ghastly uniform. It makes you look like a …

TONY: What?

MYRA: A soldier.

TONY: I’ve been one for two years.

MYRA: Isn’t that long enough?

TONY: I think I’m rather sorry to part with it. [teasing her, but half-serious] Rather nice, the Army – being told what to do, everything in its place, everything tidy …

MYRA: Tidy! It’s lucky you weren’t in Cyprus or Kenya or Suez – keeping order. [laughing angrily] Keeping everything tidy.

TONY: Well?

MYRA: You don’t believe in it. [as he does not reply] You might have been killed for something you don’t even believe in.

TONY: You’re so delightfully old-fashioned. Getting killed for something you believe in is surely a bit of a luxury these days? Something your generation enjoyed. Now one just – gets killed. [He has intended this to sound calmly cynical, but in spite of himself it comes out plaintive.]

MYRA [has an impulse to make a maternal protective gesture, suppresses it at the last moment. Says quietly, but between her teeth]: All the same, get out of those clothes.

TONY [angry, because he knows he has sounded like a child]: All right – but what do you suppose you look like?

MYRA [cheerfully]: Oh, the char, I know. But I’ve been cleaning the stairs. If I’d known you were coming …

TONY: Oh, I know, you’d have changed your trousers.

MYRA: I might even have worn a dress.

TONY [languidly charming]: Really, Mother, when you look so charming when you try, do you have to look like that?

MYRA [cheerfully impatient]: Oh, don’t be such a little – no one can look charming cleaning the stairs.

TONY [unpleasantly]: So you were cleaning the stairs. And who did you expect to find sitting here?

MYRA: Why, no one.

TONY: You came creeping down. Were you going to put your hands over my eyes and say: ‘Peekaboo’? [gives a young, aggressive, unhappy laugh]

MYRA: It was dark. I couldn’t see who it was. It might have been anybody.

TONY: Of course, anybody. Why don’t you put your hands over my eyes now and say ‘Peekaboo’? How do you know? – I might rather like it. Then you could bite my ear, or something like that. [gives the same laugh]

MYRA [quietly]: Tony, you’ve just come home.

TONY: Well, and why did you come creeping down the stairs?

MYRA: I came down because the telephone was ringing earlier. I came to see. Did you take it?

TONY: So it was. Yes. I forgot.

MYRA [cheerfully]: You’re a bloody bore, Tony.

TONY [wincing]: Do you have to swear?

MYRA: Well, now you’re home I suppose I’ll have to stop. [in a refined voice] There are times, dear, when you do rather irritate me.

TONY [stiffly]: I’ve already said that I’m quite prepared to go somewhere else if it’s inconvenient for you to have me at such short notice. [MYRA watches him: she is on the defensive.] Well? Who is that you’ve got upstairs with you? Who is it this time?

MYRA: How do you know I’ve got anyone upstairs with me?

TONY: Who is it upstairs?

MYRA [offhand]: Sandy.

TONY: Sandy who?

MYRA: Don’t be silly. Sandy Boles.

TONY [staring]: But he’s my age.

MYRA: What of it?

TONY: He’s my age. He’s 22.

MYRA: I didn’t ask to see his birth certificate when I engaged him.

TONY: Engaged him?

MYRA [briskly]: He’s at a loose end. I wanted someone to help me. He’s here for a while.

TONY [slowly]: He’s staying here?

MYRA: Why not? This empty house … when you’re not here it’s so empty.

TONY: He’s in my room?

MYRA: Yes. He can move out.

TONY: Thanks. [They stare at each other like enemies.]

MYRA: Well, what is it?

TONY: Perhaps you’d rather I moved out.

MYRA: Tony, mind your own bloody business. I’ve never interfered with anything you did.

TONY: No [half-bitter, half-sad]. No, you never did. You never had time.

MYRA [hurt]: That’s unfair.

TONY: And where’s dear Sandy’s mamma?

MYRA: Milly is in Japan.

TONY: And what is dear Sandy’s errant mamma doing in Japan?

MYRA: She’s gone with a delegation of women.

TONY [laughing]: Oh I see. They are conveying the greetings of the British nation, with an apology because our Government uses their part of the world for H-bomb tests.

MYRA [wistfully]: Is it really so funny?

TONY [not laughing]: Hilarious. And why aren’t you with them?

MYRA: Because I was expecting you.

TONY [plaintively]: But you’d forgotten I was coming.

MYRA [irritated]: I might have forgotten that you were expected home at four o’clock on Tuesday the 18th March, 1958, but I was expecting you. Otherwise, of course, I would have gone with Milly.

TONY: But Milly didn’t deny herself the pleasure on Sandy’s account. He could fend for himself.

MYRA: You talk as if … Sandy’s 22. He’s not a little boy who needs his mother to wipe his nose for him. He’s a man.

TONY [terribly hurt]: That must be nice for you. I’m so glad.

MYRA [between her teeth]: My God, Tony. [She moves angrily away.]

TONY: Where are you going?

MYRA: I’m going to demonstrate about the hydrogen bomb outside Parliament with a lot of other women. [as TONY laughs] Yes, laugh, do.

TONY: Oh, I’m not laughing. I do really admire you, I suppose. But what use do you suppose it’s going to be? What good is it?

MYRA [who has responded to his tone like a little girl who has been praised]: Oh, Tony, but of course it’s some good. Surely you think so?

TONY: You’ve been demonstrating for good causes all your life. So many I’ve lost count. And I’m sure you have … And where are we now?

MYRA: How do you know things mightn’t have been worse?

TONY: How could they possibly be worse? How could they?

[He sounds so forlorn, almost tearful, that she impulsively comes to him where he sits on the arm of the sofa, and holds his head against her shoulder, laying her cheek against it.]

One might almost think you were pleased to see me.

MYRA [amazed]: But of course I am. [He smiles, rather sadly.] Of course. [gaily, moving away from him] Tony, I must tell you about what I’m doing. You know we’ve got that big meeting the day after tomorrow.

TONY: Actually, not.

MYRA: We’ve advertised it in all the papers.

TONY: I never read newspapers.

MYRA: Oh. Well, it’s tomorrow. And I’ve worked out a simply marvellous … wait, I’ll show you. [She is fiddling about near the tape-machine.]

TONY: Do you have to? I thought you said you had to go to your demonstration?

MYRA: Yes, I must rush. I’ll just do the end bit. It’s a sort of symposium – you know, bits of idiotic speeches by politicians – like this … [switches on machine].

POMPOUS VOICE: People who object to the hydrogen bomb are simply neurotic!

MYRA: And this –

PULPIT VOICE: The hydrogen bomb must be regarded by true Christians as part of God’s plan for humanity.

MYRA: And then war effects, you know.

TONY: War effects?

MYRA: Listen. [puts on machine]

[Medley of war noises. Then machine-gun fire. Then the beginning of a scream – a conventional bomb falling.]

TONY: For God’s sake stop it.

MYRA [stopping machine]: What’s the matter? You see, the thing is, people have no imagination. You’ve got to rub their noses in it. [starts machine again]

[The scream begins and gathers strength. TONY stands rigid, trembling. At the explosion he flings himself down on the divan, his arms over his ears.]

[taking needle off] There. Not bad, is it? [turning] Where are you? Oh, there you are. Don’t you think it’s a good idea?

[TONY sits limp on the divan, hand dangling, staring in front of him. He wipes sweat off his forehead slowly.]

I’m really very pleased with it. [She stands, looking out of the window, starts to hum.] I must go and get dressed and go out.

I do wish you young people would join in these demonstrations. Why don’t you? – we’re such a middle-aged lot. Why do you leave it all to us? [hums] Well, I’ll finish the work on the tape tonight.

TONY: I forgot to tell you, there was a telephone message. From Philip. He says he wants you to put up Rosemary. Tonight.

MYRA: Who’s Rosemary?

TONY: Didn’t you know? He’s getting married. To Rosemary.

[MYRA slowly turns from the window. She looks as if she has been hit.]

MYRA: Philip is getting married?

TONY: So he said.

MYRA: And he wants me to put her up?

TONY [looking at her curiously]: Why not? You’re old friends, aren’t you?

MYRA: Old friends?

TONY: Well, aren’t you?

MYRA [laughing bitterly]: Of course. Old friends. As you know.

TONY [examining her, surprised]: But you surely don’t mind. It’s been years since …

MYRA: Since he threw me over – quite.

TONY: Threw you over? You’re getting very emotional all of a sudden, aren’t you – all these old-fashioned attitudes at the drop of a hat – I was under the impression that you parted because your fundamental psychological drives were not complementary! [with another look at her stricken face] Threw you over! I’ve never seen you like this.

MYRA [dry and bitter]: If you’ve lain in a man’s arms every night for five years and he’s thrown you over as if you were a tart he’d picked up in Brighton for the week-end, then the word friend has to be used with – a certain amount of irony, let’s say. [briskly] We’ve been good friends ever since, yes.

[TONY slowly rises, stands facing her.]

TONY: Why do you talk like that to me?

MYRA [noticing him]: What’s the matter now? Oh, I see. [contemptuous] You’re not five years old. Why do you expect me to treat you as if you were five years old?

TONY: Perhaps I am five years old. But this is after all an extraordinary outburst of emotion. Dear Uncle Philip has been in and out of this house for years. Whenever he’s in London he might just as well be living here. I can’t remember a time when you and Uncle Philip in animated conversation wasn’t a permanent feature of the landscape.

MYRA [drily]: I am the woman Philip talks to, yes.

TONY: Why all this emotion, suddenly?

MYRA: He has not before asked me to put up his prospective wife.

TONY: For God’s sake, why should you care? You’ve lain in men’s arms since, haven’t you? Well, isn’t that how you want me to talk, like a big boy?

MYRA: I suppose you will grow up some day. [goes to the foot of the stairs] When’s she coming?

TONY: Some time later this evening, he said. And he’s coming, too. We’re going to have a jolly family evening.

MYRA: You’ll have to look after her until I get back. We must be perfectly charming to her.

TONY: I don’t see why you should be if you don’t feel like it.

MYRA: You don’t see why?

TONY: No. I’m really interested. Why?

MYRA: Pride.

TONY [laughing]: Pride! You! [He collapses on the divan laughing.]

MYRA [hurt]: Oh, go to hell, you bloody little …

[Her tone cuts his laughter. He sits stiffly in the corner of the divan. She makes an angry gesture and runs up the stairs. Before she is out of sight she is humming: ‘Boohoo, you’ve got me crying for you’. TONY strips off his uniform and puts on black trousers and a black sweater. He rolls up the uniform like dirty washing and stuffs it into the knapsack. He throws the knapsack into a cupboard. He stands unhappily smoothing back his hair with both hands. Then he goes to the looking-glass and stands smoothing his hair back and looking at his face. While he does this, SANDY very quietly comes down the stairs behind him. He is an amiable young man at ease in his world.]

SANDY [quietly]: Hullo, Tony.

TONY [still standing before the looking-glass. He stiffens, letting his hands drop. He slowly turns, with a cold smile]: Hullo, Sandy.

SANDY [at ease]: I see you’ve disposed of the war paint already.

TONY: Yes.

SANDY: That’s a very elegant sweater.

TONY [responding]: Yes, it’s rather nice, isn’t it … [Disliking himself because he has responded, he stiffens up. He roughly rumples up his hair and hitches his shoulders uncomfortably in the sweater.] Don’t care what I wear.

SANDY: I’ll move my things out of your room. Sorry, but we didn’t expect you today.

TONY: Next time we will give you good warning.

SANDY: Cigarette?

TONY: That’s a very smart cigarette case. No thanks.

SANDY: Mother brought it back from China last year. You remember she went?

TONY: Yes, I remember. Mother went, too. I suppose one does have to go to China for one’s cigarette cases.

SANDY: I’m rather fond of it myself. [pause] Did you know I was helping Myra with her work?

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