Complete Works, Volume IV (3 page)

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KATE
Yes, I quite like those kind of things, doing it.

ANNA
What kind of things?

KATE
Oh, you know, that sort of thing.

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DEELEY
Do you mean cooking?

KATE
All that thing.

ANNA
We weren’t terribly elaborate in cooking, didn’t have the time, but every so often dished up an incredibly enormous stew, guzzled the lot, and then more often than not sat up half the night reading Yeats.

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(
To herself
.) Yes. Every so often. More often than not.

Anna stands, walks to the window.

And the sky is so still.

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Can you see that tiny ribbon of light? Is that the sea? Is that the horizon?

DEELEY
You live on a very different coast.

ANNA
Oh, very different. I live on a volcanic island.

DEELEY
I know it.

ANNA
Oh, do you?

DEELEY
I’ve been there.

Pause

ANNA
I’m so delighted to be here.

DEELEY
It’s nice I know for Katey to see you. She hasn’t many friends.

ANNA
She has you.

DEELEY
She hasn’t made many friends, although there’s been every opportunity for her to do so.

ANNA
Perhaps she has all she wants.

DEELEY
She lacks curiosity.

ANNA
Perhaps she’s happy.

Pause

KATE
Are you talking about me?

DEELEY
Yes.

ANNA
She was always a dreamer.

DEELEY
She likes taking long walks. All that. You know. Raincoat on. Off down the lane, hands deep in pockets. All that kind of thing.

Anna turns to look at Kate.

ANNA
Yes.

DEELEY
Sometimes I take her face in my hands and look at it.

ANNA
Really?

DEELEY
Yes, I look at it, holding it in my hands. Then I kind of let it go, take my hands away, leave it floating.

KATE
My head is quite fixed. I have it on.

DEELEY
(
To Anna.
) It just floats away.

ANNA
She was always a dreamer.

Anna sits.

Sometimes, walking, in the park, I’d say to her, you’re dreaming, you’re dreaming, wake up, what are you dreaming? and she’d look round at me, flicking her hair, and look at me as if I were part of her dream.

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One day she said to me, I’ve slept through Friday. No you haven’t, I said, what do you mean? I’ve slept right through Friday, she said. But today is Friday, I said, it’s been Friday all day, it’s now Friday night, you haven’t slept through Friday. Yes I have, she said, I’ve slept right through it, today is Saturday.

DEELEY
You mean she literally didn’t know what day it was?

ANNA
No.

KATE
Yes I did. It was Saturday.

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DEELEY
What month are we in?

KATE
September.

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DEELEY
We’re forcing her to think. We must see you more often. You’re a healthy influence.

ANNA
But she was always a charming companion.

DEELEY
Fun to live with?

ANNA
Delightful.

DEELEY
Lovely to look at, delightful to know.

ANNA
Ah, those songs. We used to play them, all of them, all the time, late at night, lying on the floor, lovely old things. Sometimes I’d look at her face, but she was quite unaware of my gaze.

DEELEY
Gaze?

ANNA
What?

DEELEY
The word gaze. Don’t hear it very often.

ANNA
Yes, quite unaware of it. She was totally absorbed.

DEELEY
In Lovely to look at, delightful to know?

KATE
(
To Anna.
) I don’t know that song. Did we have it?

DEELEY
(
Singing, to Kate.
) You’re lovely to look at, delightful to know . . .

ANNA
Oh we did. Yes, of course. We had them all.

DEELEY
(
Singing.
) Blue moon, I see you standing alone . . .

ANNA
(
Singing.
) The way you comb your hair . . .

DEELEY
(
Singing.
) Oh no they can’t take that away from me . . .

ANNA
(
Singing.
) Oh but you’re lovely, with your smile so warm . . .

DEELEY
(
Singing.
) I’ve got a woman crazy for me. She’s funny that way.

Slight pause

ANNA
(
Singing.
) You are the promised kiss of springtime . . .

DEELEY
(
Singing.
) And someday I’ll know that moment divine, When all the things you are, are mine!

Slight pause

DEELEY
(
Singing.
) That I get a kick out of you?

Pause

DEELEY
(
Singing.
) When a lovely flame dies . . .

ANNA
(
Singing.
) Smoke gets in your eyes.

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DEELEY
(
Singing.
) The sigh of midnight trains in empty stations . . .

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ANNA
(
Singing.
) The park at evening when the bell has sounded . . .

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DEELEY
(
Singing.
) The smile of Garbo and the scent of roses . . .

ANNA
(
Singing.
) The waiters whistling as the last bar closes . . .

DEELEY
(
Singing.
) Oh, how the ghost of you clings . . .

Pause

They don’t make them like that any more.

Silence

What happened to me was this. I popped into a fleapit to see Odd Man Out. Some bloody awful summer afternoon, walking in no direction. I remember thinking there was something familiar
about the neighbourhood and suddenly recalled that it was in this very neighbourhood that my father bought me my first tricycle, the only tricycle in fact I ever possessed. Anyway, there was the bicycle shop and there was this fleapit showing Odd Man Out and there were two usherettes standing in the foyer and one of them was stroking her breasts and the other one was saying ‘dirty bitch’ and the one stroking her breasts was saying ‘mmnnn’ with a very sensual relish and smiling at her fellow usherette, so I marched in on this excruciatingly hot summer afternoon in the middle of nowhere and watched Odd Man Out and thought Robert Newton was fantastic. And I still think he was fantastic. And I would commit murder for him, even now. And there was only one other person in the cinema, one other person in the whole of the whole cinema, and there she is. And there she was, very dim, very still, placed more or less I would say at the dead centre of the auditorium. I was off centre and have remained so. And I left when the film was over, noticing, even though James Mason was dead, that the first usherette appeared to be utterly exhausted, and I stood for a moment in the sun, thinking I suppose about something and then this girl came out and I think looked about her and I said wasn’t Robert Newton fantastic, and she said something or other, Christ knows what, but looked at me, and I thought Jesus this is it, I’ve made a catch, this is a trueblue pickup, and when we had sat down in the café with tea she looked into her cup and then up at me and told me she thought Robert Newton was remarkable. So it was Robert Newton who brought us together and it is only Robert Newton who can tear us apart.

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ANNA
F. J. McCormick was good too.

DEELEY
I know F. J. McCormick was good too. But he didn’t bring us together.

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DEELEY
You’ve seen the film then?

ANNA
Yes.

DEELEY
When?

ANNA
Oh . . . long ago.

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DEELEY
(
To Kate.
) Remember that film?

KATE
Oh yes. Very well.

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DEELEY
I think I am right in saying the next time we met we held hands. I held her cool hand, as she walked by me, and I said something which made her smile, and she looked at me, didn’t you, flicking her hair back, and I thought she was even more fantastic than Robert Newton.

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And then at a slightly later stage our naked bodies met, hers cool, warm, highly agreeable, and I wondered what Robert Newton would think of this. What would he think of this I wondered as I touched her profoundly all over.
(
To Anna.
) What do you think he’d think?

ANNA
I never met Robert Newton but I do know I know what you mean. There are some things one remembers even though they may never have happened. There are things I remember which may never have happened but as I recall them so they take place.

DEELEY
What?

ANNA
This man crying in our room. One night late I returned and found him sobbing, his hand over his face, sitting in the armchair, all crumpled in the armchair and Katey sitting on the bed with a mug of coffee and no one spoke to me, no one spoke, no
one looked up. There was nothing I could do. I undressed and switched out the light and got into my bed, the curtains were thin, the light from the street came in, Katey still, on her bed, the man sobbed, the light came in, it flicked the wall, there was a slight breeze, the curtains occasionally shook, there was nothing but sobbing, suddenly it stopped. The man came over to me, quickly, looked down at me, but I would have absolutely nothing to do with him, nothing.

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No, no, I’m quite wrong . . . he didn’t move quickly . . . That’s quite wrong . . . he moved . . . very slowly, the light was bad, and stopped. He stood in the centre of the room. He looked at us both, at our beds. Then he turned towards me. He approached my bed. He bent down over me. But I would have nothing to do with him, absolutely nothing.

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DEELEY
What kind of man was he?

ANNA
But after a while I heard him go out. I heard the front door close, and footsteps in the street, then silence, then the footsteps fade away, and then silence.

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But then sometime later in the night I woke up and looked across the room to her bed and saw two shapes.

DEELEY
He’d come back!

ANNA
He was lying across her lap on her bed.

DEELEY
A man in the dark across my wife’s lap?

Pause

ANNA
But then in the early morning . . . he had gone.

DEELEY
Thank Christ for that.

ANNA
It was as if he had never been.

DEELEY
Of course he’d been. He went twice and came once.

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Well, what an exciting story that was.

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What did he look like, this fellow?

ANNA
Oh, I never saw his face clearly. I don’t know.

DEELEY
But was he—?

Kate stands. She goes to a small table, takes a cigarette from a box and lights it. She looks down at Anna.

KATE
You talk of me as if I were dead.

ANNA
No, no, you weren’t dead, you were so lively, so animated, you used to laugh—

DEELEY
Of course you did. I made you smile myself, didn’t I? walking along the street, holding hands. You smiled fit to bust.