Plays One Page 12

  BETTY. I’ve made lots of tea.

  ENID. She means at meetings, you don’t do that.

  BETTY. But I could describe my life as making tea for others.

  ENID. This thing’s obsessed you, you’re obsessed. You’ll be making tea for others in the nuthouse the way you’re carrying on. Either that or Holloway bloody prison.

  BETTY. Did you see in the evening paper about them lying down in the road up Westminster?

  ENID. I said to Bob I said. They’re asking for it. Pretending to be dead, then a bloody great bus will run ’em over and nobody will know the difference.

  BETTY. Everybody thought the suffragettes were mad at the time.

  ENID. Oh no, you ain’t bin to see another boring exhibition down the library?

  BETTY. I bin thinking about it. Remember them letters, from the Labour MPs? Even they thought it was disgusting that women should ’ave the vote.

  ENID. Yeah well, it didn’t change much.

  BETTY. Maybe ’cos people forgot about it, what with the war and that.

  ENID. Anyway, you’d better get on with this daft cake. One thing they never forget in a hurry is their stomachs.

  BETTY. You going to give me a hand?

  ENID. Don’t worry, if it turns out okay I’ll make Bob one. Never know, eating patriarchy cake could become like Pancake Day.

  IVY enters.

  ENID. Hello Mrs Taylor, are your feet any better?

  IVY. Yeah, I’m just off to audition for the Sugar Plum Fairy.

  ENID. Second thoughts I think I’d better get along.

  The doorbell rings.

  BETTY. Who can that be?

  ENID. I’ll get it. (She opens the door to a man.)

  MR SMITH. Good morning, madam, I’m from the Department of Health and Social Security.

  ENID. Hello and goodbye.

  MR SMITH. Actually I wanted a word with your husband.

  ENID. He don’t live here.

  MR SMITH. Oh, this is … (He looks at his file.)

  BETTY. Please come in, this is a friend of mine who was just leaving.

  ENID. Like I said, hello and goodbye.

  MR SMITH. Oh … Hello Mrs Clayton, is your husband at home?

  BETTY. No, who are you?

  MR SMITH. I’m from the Department of Health and Social Security.

  IVY. We had a visit from you lot yesterday.

  MR SMITH. Really, I wasn’t informed.

  BETTY. About an aid for the TV.

  MR SMITH. That must have been Social Services, I’m from Social Security.

  BETTY. Oh it is good of you to come, we only put in for a heating allowance for Mum a few weeks ago.

  MR SMITH. It’s not about that I’m afraid. Could you tell me where your husband is.

  IVY. He’s babysitting for his daughter.

  MR SMITH. When will he be back?

  IVY. Not sure. She had a hospital appointment, you know what they’re like. Why?

  MR SMITH. We have reason to believe that he is in fact working.

  IVY. Whatever gave you that idea?

  MR SMITH. We received a letter stating details.

  BETTY (shocked). From who?

  MR SMITH. We’re not permitted to divulge its source even if we knew it.

  BETTY. You mean to say someone wrote you a poisonous pen letter and you believed them?

  MR SMITH. You’d be surprised how reliable they are.

  BETTY. Well, that’s funny, ’cos if anyone gets one in the post, the police usually advise you to throw it away, but I s’pose they tell you to believe it.

  MR SMITH. Not exactly but we have to check these things out.

  IVY. Well, he ain’t working and that’t that. Now what about my heating allowance?

  MR SMITH. I’m not sure if this family is entitled to Social Security. I’m afraid I can’t apply for a heating allowance until I find out definitely whether your son-in-law is working.

  IVY. By which time it’ll be the middle of December and I’ll have kicked the bucket with hypothermia.

  BETTY. Mum.

  MR SMITH. I’ll make a note of it. Now, you’re Mrs Taylor, Mrs Clayton’s mother?

  IVY. No I’m her pet snake.

  MR SMITH. And what makes you think you’re entitled to a heating allowance?

  IVY. You wily bastard.

  BETTY. Mum! (To MR SMITH:) She don’t know what she’s saying.

  IVY. Oh yes she does. She knows what he’s saying and all, he means we have to make a guess at what would qualify us for a heating allowance and if we guess right we can have it. Well have I got news for you mate – this ain’t family fortunes. For one thing, I’m always cold. I have to have a fire on even in the summer and all night in my room in the winter. I’ve got chronic arthritis and I’m very weak – for Chrissake, I’m a dying woman.

  MR SMITH. We’re none of us getting any younger, ha ha.

  IVY. No and you won’t be getting any older if you don’t take that sneer off your mush.

  MR SMITH. I would remind you I’m here to investigate a possible fraud by the claimant of this household. I do not take kindly to being threatened within inches of my life. I will look into the heating allowance but, mark my words, not until we’ve investigated the other matter thoroughly.

  BETTY. Thank you for coming.

  MR SMITH. Good day, Mrs Clayton.

  BETTY. Umm, have you heard of Greenham Common as well?

  MR SMITH (thinks by now the whole household is mad). As well as what? What about it?

  BETTY. I just wondered what you thought.

  MR SMITH. It’s nothing to do with me I’m sure, but no doubt some of them are extracting state benefits under false pretences. We’re probably having a field day down there. Good day.

  He goes out.

  BETTY. Oh dear.

  IVY. To think people died in the war for the likes of that cretin to breed.

  BETTY. You realise you went too far I s’pose, Bette Davis. Well, you’re not going to get an Oscar for that performance.

  IVY. What are you going to get ‘It was nice to meet you’ Betty, when are you going to stand up for yourself, eh? People like that are scum of the earth, they don’t deserve the time of day.

  BETTY. No, Mother, people what wrote that letter are the scum of the earth. Mind, he didn’t like the idea of Greenham Common much.

  IVY. I hope it drops on the bloody lot of ’em, put pay to the likes of him. That’ll teach him a lesson he’ll never forget.

  JIM enters.

  BETTY. Oh Jim, something terrible’s happened.

  JIM. Nanny’s dentures fallen down the bog again?

  BETTY. No, sit down, sit down. Man from Social Security’s been round, they know you’re working.

  JIM. Know? They can’t know.

  BETTY. Well, someone’s s’posed to have written a letter ain’t they?

  JIM. What? What bastard?

  BETTY. I don’t know. What are we going to do?

  JIM. You didn’t tell them nothing?

  IVY. We never. We carried on about we thought it was for the heating allowance.

  BETTY. Who could have done that?

  JIM. Nobody knew about it. Wait a minute, I know who it was, Enid, that’s who.

  BETTY. No, Jim, no. She wouldn’t.

  JIM. Want a bet, I never want her in here again.

  IVY. Jim, I ain’t never had a lot of time for the woman but I don’t think it could’ve bin.

  JIM. We’ll see if she has the audacity to show her boat again, but my bet is she’ll lay low for a couple of weeks and, as far as I’m concerned, for ever.

  Scene Eight

  LINDA and FIONA’s squat. LINDA is cutting up pieces of card so that it makes a stencil. (We can’t see what it reads.) FIONA enters with shopping bag.

  LINDA. Hi.

  FIONA. Hi, got the paint.

  LINDA. Great. Did you remember the spaghetti?

  FIONA. What do we need that for?

  LINDA. Tea?

  FIONA
. Oh hell, sorry I forgot.

  LINDA. Don’t matter. No problem.

  FIONA. Sorry.

  LINDA. S’okay. Are you all right?

  FIONA (flatly). Yeah. Went to see Betty today.

  LINDA. Thought you were pleased about that. Certainly proved me wrong.

  FIONA. She seemed … well …

  LINDA. She gone off the idea of going down there, then eh?

  FIONA. Not exactly. Have you?

  LINDA (smiles). A deal’s a deal. So what was Betty pissed off about?

  FIONA. She seemed more preoccupied with some sort of misunderstanding she’d had with your mum.

  LINDA. Perhaps we should get together and form a club. Noneffective direct discussions we’ve had with Enid.

  FIONA. It seems to have really got to her.

  LINDA. Did you manage to get out of her what it was all about?

  FIONA. The fraud squad have been round there. And Betty’s old man thinks your mum grassed them up.

  LINDA. My mum, whatever else she might or might not do, would never do that, not in a million years, never.

  FIONA. Apparently she hasn’t been round there since.

  LINDA. Why ever not?

  FIONA (shrugs). They assume guilty conscience.

  LINDA. Didn’t you go and talk to Enid?

  FIONA. How could I? Apart from the fact that my job description doesn’t involve peace-making between neighbours, I find the whole concept fraught with Freudian tension.

  LINDA. What you on about?

  FIONA. I don’t relish the thought of case work with your mother.

  LINDA. Oh dear. It looks like I’ll have to do a mother-daughter reunion number.

  FIONA. It wouldn’t come amiss. You haven’t been home for months.

  LINDA. Paternal problem patterns.

  FIONA. Do what?

  LINDA. Uses his kids as a target practice against life’s frustrations. Kicked me down three flights of stairs once.

  FIONA. My mum used to belt us when we were kids.

  LINDA. Yeah, I s’pose I was only twenty-three at the time.

  FIONA. How does Enid get on with him?

  LINDA. She gets on my nerves. Basically, she weaves a web of complete fabrication round everything. She refers to the stair episode as that time your father was helping you down the stairs.

  FIONA. Surely she doesn’t believe it.

  LINDA. Well as time goes on they get even more modified. Till every action he does becomes bloody saintly.

  FIONA. Don’t you ever get to talk to her on her own?

  LINDA. Rarely, then she’s on edge in case he comes through the door. Oh, she won’t have a word said against him. The most that ever gets admitted, is that they’ve had their ups and downs but that’s followed immediately by, if she ever had her life again she’d marry him again. Mind you she does say it parrot fashion and at breakneck speed like she might be struck dead at any moment for such an enormous lie.

  Silence.

  FIONA. What d’you think it would take for Betty and Enid to change their lives?

  LINDA (pause. Smiles). A bomb?

  Scene Nine

  IVY. Monologue.

  IVY. When you see old people on the telly in those comedy programmes what are made by morons and aren’t at all funny, all they ever seem to open and shut their traps about is the war. Everybody’s fed up to the back teeth with the bloody boring war. You know all that British Legion stuff about, ‘I died in the war for you’ and being proud that half their relatives got splattered all over the shop for a better nation and once in a while you gets round to thinking that this is the better nation and it’s the sort of thought that’s so depressing you don’t want to get round to thinking it again for a few years.

  We had a great time round here in the war. Yeah, I know you’re thinking, ‘And the silly old crow’s going to tell us it brought us all together’. Course it brought us together. Half the bloody streets disappeared. Every Saturday there was a party ’cos you didn’t know which house would be flattened next. One day we’d be having a knees-up and the next the place would be a pile of dust. Women became strong. We had to be. We ran the country and when it was over we could see the way things were going and that it was a bit late for us but we invested our dreams and hopes and plans in our daughters, only to see them evaporate like pee in the lift on a hot day. Having kids is important, but having a washing-machine, a television and a car became more important. And a husband with a steady job was set up as number one main aim. Bloody silly values for a country what was s’posed to be embarking on freedom, that’s all I can say. The war’s so bloody boring because what did it change for the better? For us, seems like sod all.

  Scene Ten

  CAROL and BETTY.

  CAROL. All this time, I can’t believe it.

  BETTY. We walked past each other on the stairs, never said a word.

  CAROL. Is the lift broken again?

  BETTY. On and off, I won’t get in it in case I get stuck.

  CAROL. Forget it, Mum, if Enid wants to act like that let her, you’ve got enough worries and I’m sorry to say, but it proves it must have been her.

  BETTY. No Carol not Enid. Anyhow your dad’s been employed properly, well three days a week with tax and insurance is better than nothing.

  CAROL. It’s a pity you had to get rid of all those things to pay back the Social Security.

  BETTY. I didn’t want them in the first place.

  CAROL. But Dad cares, he could have spent the money on himself.

  BETTY. He doesn’t listen, he’s never listened to me or what I want.

  CAROL. What do you want?

  BETTY. I don’t know.

  CAROL. How can he understand that if you don’t?

  BETTY. Anyway, that’s enough of me moaning on, how are you and Darrel?

  CAROL. Oh, fine. (Pause.) Listen, Mum, you remember before I was married?

  BETTY. When you was courting.

  CAROL. As you’d put it, yes. You know we used to come back here when you and Dad had gone to bed.

  BETTY. Carol, love, there’s no need to go into that. I know, I know young people these days well, like to make sure they’re well suited before … (Then she adds quickly.) they get married.

  CAROL (laughs). No, Mum, not that.

  BETTY. Oh, well that’s a relief.

  CAROL. We used to have a real laugh. Darrel used to line up all your ornaments on the floor and describe them as though it was an auction – go into detail – orange plastic ashtray.

  BETTY. It was that funny?

  CAROL. I used to laugh, Mum, but inside I was sad, I used to think, I still do, this collection of trinkets is all my mum’s got to show for her life. I swore I’d never be like you.

  BETTY (quietly angry). Carol, I never wanted posh things, I didn’t want anything else. I know this place might seem like a pile of tawdry crap to you and your friends but that’s their problem. I don’t want to have to go tripping round antique china, or freeze to death with pine-stripped floorboards for that matter.

  CAROL. I didn’t mean to upset you. I was trying to explain.

  BETTY. A lot of this stuff was bought for me by you and John when you were kids, surely that’s more important than a Rembrandt painting?

  CAROL. Yes, but it boils down to nothing.

  BETTY. Is that what you wanted? A posh home, posh car, posh husband, because that’s exactly what you got. What does that boil down to, eternal bliss, eh? Cos you don’t seem none too ecstatic to me.

  CAROL. I didn’t want to be like you. I wanted a husband with prospects, a home with a garden and kids, kids who would grow up with all the things I never had, but no I’m not happy.

  BETTY. You and me ended up the same – we both don’t know what we want.

  CAROL. What else is there?

  The doorbell rings.

  BETTY. The doorbell. (She gets up and answers it.) Hello.

  LINDA. Hello, I don’t know if you remember me, I’m Linda, Enid’s daugh
ter.

  LINDA enters.

  BETTY. You remember Carol, you used to go to school together.

  CAROL (forced smile). Linda, how are you these days?

  LINDA. Okay thanks and you?

  CAROL (rather abrupt). I’m married now.

  LINDA. I’m not.

  BETTY (pleased). You always got on so well together.

  LINDA. Umm, look I’ve come round because I think there’s been a misunderstanding. Mum was a bit afraid to come.

  BETTY. Huh, I don’t believe Enid’s afraid of anything.

  LINDA. It seems that someone tipped the DHSS off about your husband working and you thought it was Mum.

  BETTY. Actually, no. Jim thought it was.

  LINDA. Well, it appears the same day someone came round to investigate my brother Dennis’s illegal working habits and my dad thought it was you.

  BETTY. Why didn’t Enid tell me?

  LINDA. Because you’ve been avoiding her. What was she to think?

  BETTY. Where is she?

  LINDA. Pacing the balcony like something out of a John Wayne movie.

  BETTY. Hang on a second. (She goes out.)

  CAROL and LINDA are left alone. There is an awkward silence.

  CAROL. I’ve got a little boy now.

  LINDA. That’s nice.

  CAROL. I don’t s’pose you really think that.

  LINDA. Why not?

  CAROL. I remember the things you used to say at school.

  LINDA. I remember the things you used to say.

  CAROL. You were always getting me into trouble.

  LINDA. Really? I thought that was Darrel.

  CAROL. Well, I’ve changed.

  LINDA. So I see. What d’you mean me? You were the one. It was me who took the rap because you looked as though butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth.

  CAROL. I suppose you’re one of those lot at Greenham Common.

  LINDA. Actually, I’m the chief fish fryer at Littlewood’s canteen. I would have thought women’s peace camps were more your bag than mine.

  CAROL. You’re joking.

  LINDA. Don’t you want a world for your little boy to grow up in?

  CAROL. Actually we’re thinking of emigrating to Australia.

  LINDA. Oh, that’s nice.

  CAROL. I know you don’t think that for one moment.

  LINDA (shrugs). Been some good Australian films on the telly recently.

  CAROL. And I suppose you’re a vegetarian.