Plays One Read online

  HILARY. If that’s what turns yer on. I s’pose you’ll be wanting a cup of coffee.

  ROWENA. No thanks, I’ve just had one.

  HILARY. Not stopping long, then?

  ROWENA. Are you busy?

  HILARY. As a matter of fact I’m up to me eyes with the Sun bingo. I know the Social money ain’t s’pose to go on luxuries like the daily papers but then I’m a deviant, but of course you know that anyway.

  ROWENA tries to laugh casually.

  HILARY. Forgot me manners. Sit down. Won’t you please?

  ROWENA (sits down). Thanks. (She tries to take in the surroundings subtly.)

  HILARY. Well, what d’yer want?

  ROWENA. Nothing. Nothing special. I just called round to see if everything was all right.

  HILARY. I might be thick but I know there’s no such thing as door to door social work, not with this government anyway.

  ROWENA. Okay, your previous social worker phoned me.

  HILARY. Oh Gawd, the late Mrs Crawley.

  ROWENA. She’s not dead.

  HILARY. More’s the pity. No, I always used to call her the late Mrs Crawley on account of she was always late. Trouble with you lot, you read too deeply into things what aren’t there.

  ROWENA. Oh I see, and she asked me to pop in and see how you were getting along.

  HILARY. And here I was thinking, one good thing about getting me transfer was getting you nosey bleeders off me back. (Pause.) No offence like.

  ROWENA. It’s just that I thought I’d introduce myself so that if you ever did need anything you’d know where to come.

  HILARY. Ta.

  ROWENA. You’ve got a little boy, is that right?

  HILARY. What of it? You can’t take him away you know, I look after him proper, he don’t go without nothing.

  ROWENA. I can assure you I have no intention of doing any such thing. What’s his name?

  HILARY. Heathcliffe.

  ROWENA (thinks this is a breakthrough). Emily Brontë?

  HILARY. Na, Kate Bush.

  ROWENA. Who?

  HILARY. The record, you know (She sings.) ‘Heathcliffe it’s me, it’s Cathy —’

  ROWENA. Oh. (Then:) My mum was reading Ivanhoe when she was pregnant with me. That’s where I got my name.

  HILARY. I don’t blame you for changing it. Rowena’s strange enough but Ivanhoe – God what a mouthful.

  ROWENA. No, Rowena’s a character in it.

  HILARY (flatly). Oh, really.

  ROWENA (casually). Do you still maintain contact with the father?

  HILARY. S’no point.

  ROWENA. Maintenance.

  HILARY. You’re joking. They’d only take it off me. The DHSS. Then after a couple of months he’d stop paying and I’d have to take him to court. No way.

  ROWENA. Does he still see Heathcliffe?

  HILARY. No.

  ROWENA. Where is he?

  HILARY. Dunno.

  ROWENA. Heathcliffe?

  HILARY (sarcastic). Oh dear me, now where did I leave him? Out playing on the window ledge? Or was it the M11? (Then:) He’s down his Nan’s.

  ROWENA. That’s nice, does she live close by?

  HILARY. As it happens.

  ROWENA. Is there anything you’re concerned about that I might be of any help with?

  HILARY. Money.

  ROWENA. Well, as you know we have no means of offering longterm financial support.

  HILARY. You have no means of offering nothing. What d’you do, eh? All the people you see, the only thing what’s wrong with their lives is money and all your fancy ideas and posh words can’t cover up nothing. At the end of the bleedin’ day the only advice you can give us is to march in and say (She assumes a German accent.) ‘You vill learn to budget.’

  Long pause.

  Right, look sorry. I didn’t mean to go on at yer – you ain’t halfway as near as bad as the last one. Thatcher had nothing on her, I reckon her facepacks was made of chainmail.

  ROWENA. We’ve had some complaints from the neighbours.

  HILARY. I see, now you want to prove you can’t be manipulated. Yeah, big word for me ain’t it?

  ROWENA. About men, drunk on the landing at all hours.

  HILARY. Don’t exaggerate.

  ROWENA. It’s not true then?

  HILARY. I’ve got men friends, yeah. But then if I had female friends you’d reckon I was the other way and have my boy in care quick as a flash.

  ROWENA. Hilary, I do not have the power to whip children into care unless there is proof that they’re being maltreated.

  HILARY. And then you whip ’em, in care, eh?

  ROWENA. You know what I mean.

  HILARY. I ain’t never so much as laid one finger on him and I keep him looking real smart. Yeah, I know I look like something the Oxfam shop rejected but I always keep him smart. He has everything new … Nothing secondhand. Do you know how much a pair of kid’s shoes cost?

  ROWENA. And your boyfriends help you out? (Pause.) There must be better (She corrects herself.) easier ways of clothing Heathcliffe.

  HILARY. Oh right. Hit me with ’em.

  ROWENA. I know employment’s hard to find.

  HILARY. And I ain’t exactly got golden bonuses either – no qualifications – on me own – a kid.

  ROWENA. What did you do before he was born?

  HILARY. I ain’t never had a job then neither.

  ROWENA. How old are you?

  HILARY. Look at it on the bright side – I’ve only got another thirty-six years before I retire.

  ROWENA. You’ve never worked?

  HILARY. Not unless you count my CSE needlework project. You’re s’posed to be a social worker. Where you bin?

  ROWENA. Sorry.

  HILARY. What for? Ain’t your fault.

  ROWENA. Do you enjoy, er, doing it?

  HILARY. Do me a favour.

  ROWENA. Why? Then, I mean, why do you do, er, it?

  HILARY. They reckon we’re all sitting on a gold mine, don’t they?

  ROWENA. That lucrative?

  HILARY. Even I ain’t heard of that one.

  ROWENA. That much money in it?

  HILARY. No, for me there ain’t, no.

  ROWENA. If you had a job would that be OK?

  HILARY. What you going to do, give me yours?

  ROWENA. I’m just thinking …

  HILARY. Yeah, but who’d look after Heathcliffe? Me mum can’t, not all day.

  ROWENA. If we got him a place in a day nursery.

  HILARY (weary). He’s been on the waiting list since he was born.

  ROWENA. If we could …

  HILARY. And if a pig orbited the moon.

  ROWENA. Is that what you want?

  HILARY. What … a bacon satellite? Do you think I want to live like this? Course I want a job.

  ROWENA. I can’t promise but I’ll do my best.

  HILARY (not nastily). You sound like Mrs Crawley. She was a girl guide captain in her spare time. D’you really not want a coffee? S’no trouble.

  ROWENA. Thanks. (She looks at her watch.) But I’ve got two other visits this evening.

  HILARY. Blimey. You work unsociable hours.

  ROWENA (smiles). Me?

  HILARY. And I don’t even get no sick pay neither. Honest, I want a job. I really do.

  ROWENA. To want a job is hardly to be in the minority, to have one is.

  HILARY. Do what?

  ROWENA. Do you mind what work, er, which work. I mean the work you do – within reason?

  HILARY. I’ll take anything what’ll give me enough money to live on – with proper wages packet and National Insurance.

  ROWENA. I’ll be in touch.

  Scene Five

  10 p.m. ROWENA is walking home after her last visit. A MAN walks behind her. (This is quite ‘innocent’. There is no threat of attack.) ROWENA and the MAN freeze, then walk again.

  ROWENA (voice over). Wish I wasn’t wearing a skirt. I look quite respectable though. What am I doin
g out this late at night? Working. The only women who work at night are prostitutes. Otherwise their husbands would meet them. Don’t walk fast, it will look funny. Don’t slow up – inviting. Don’t look too nervous. Why the hell doesn’t he cross over?

  They pass each other. They look back.

  ROWENA’s living-room.

  TREVOR (grabs her). Boo! Got yer.

  ROWENA (jumps out of shock). Get away from me. What the hell are you doing?

  TREVOR. What’s the matter? Jesus Christ.

  ROWENA. Don’t do that.

  TREVOR. Do what?

  ROWENA. Jump on me, you stupid sod.

  TREVOR. Thanks a bunch, I was only taking the trouble to welcome my wife home from a hard day at the office.

  ROWENA. Well don’t.

  TREVOR. Bloody hell. At least I don’t loll in front of the telly demanding my dinner.

  ROWENA. Just go around scaring the bloody life out of me.

  TREVOR. No need to bite my head off just because you’re late.

  ROWENA (sits in a chair). Everything took longer than I expected.

  TREVOR. Pity you don’t get overtime, you’d be worth a fortune.

  ROWENA. All right. I’ve earned an afternoon off in lieu. No, spare me the toilet jokes.

  TREVOR. I was going to say, you’re looking rather flushed.

  ROWENA (groans). Dreadful. How was your day?

  TREVOR. Boring. Except Harriet’s house burnt down, that’s why she was off.

  ROWENA. Oh no, poor woman.

  TREVOR. Yes, even I felt a bit sorry for her.

  ROWENA. Was anyone hurt?

  TREVOR. No, only the dog – burnt alive, but that appeared to be an ill wind anyway. Because, next door apparently had taken legal action against it because it had had a fight with their terrier and killed it. I ask you. How could you take a dog to court? What would it say when it got there? Alec reckons it would take a bow wow. Anyway that’s hypothetical as it kicked the bucket Joan of Arc style.

  ROWENA. Where is she now?

  TREVOR. In the little doggie paradise. No, I s’pose after what it did the doggie hell.

  ROWENA. No, fool, Harriet.

  TREVOR. With relatives. (Joking.) You’re home now, you’re s’posed to switch the caring off.

  ROWENA. You haven’t got a job going have you?

  TREVOR. You can’t be that fed up.

  ROWENA. Not for me, nana, that young woman I told you about who we thought was on the game, well she wants to get off.

  TREVOR. Hey Row, you can’t jump in all shining morality. If that’s what she’s chosen to do.

  ROWENA. Choice. That seems rather an inappropriate word.

  TREVOR. Perhaps it’s your particular values that are inappropriate.

  ROWENA. Since when has wanting a job become a middle-class value?

  TREVOR. When you choose to overlook the fact that by other definitions, she’s a working girl.

  ROWENA. She said she wanted a proper job. She doesn’t like what she does.

  TREVOR. Of course she said that to you. What do you think she was going to say – a screw a day keeps the tax man away.

  ROWENA. I think she meant it.

  TREVOR. Pull the other one. (Then:) You know they’ve been wanting to tax it for years – just haven’t found a way – short of inventing accountants to accumulate sperm returns.

  ROWENA. Trevor.

  TREVOR. Sperm is a perfectly respectable term.

  ROWENA. Well that’s it, then. Ron.

  TREVOR. Interesting word association.

  ROWENA. I’ll give him a ring a bit later on.

  TREVOR. I should have thought that dinner party was enough social intercourse to last a lifetime.

  ROWENA. Stupid combination, Mum, them and Clive.

  TREVOR. Your mother’s one thing, but Yvonne, she’s something else.

  ROWENA. Poor Yvonne, we used to have such a laugh at school. I can’t believe the change in her.

  TREVOR. You say that every time we see them. If she laughed now the shock would kill her.

  ROWENA. Mind you, it can’t be easy being married to a man who pretends to be a reincarnation of Jack the Lad.

  TREVOR. What do you mean by that?

  ROWENA. Those banal jokes.

  TREVOR. Honestly, sometimes you can be so snotty. Okay, so they weren’t that funny, but couldn’t you see he felt out of his depth, and with that bourgeois bitch who passes herself off as my mother-in-law it’s hardly surprising.

  ROWENA (hurt). Trev.

  TREVOR (defensive). Well, she can’t stand me.

  ROWENA. That’s purely projectionist. You can’t stand her.

  TREVOR. I know what projectionist means. She’s cracked, round the bend, nutty, potty, and if she’d been one of your clients you’d have had her in the funny farm by now. But no, because of her breeding, nobody would dare slap a loony label on her. She’s quite at liberty to pass as eccentric.

  ROWENA. She’s still my mum.

  TREVOR. Yeah, well, sorry, it’s just that, well, it was a perfectly enjoyable meal until Yvonne suddenly found her tongue, and then the atmosphere, well, we might as well have been in a fall-out shelter.

  ROWENA. Maybe she had a point, she’s unhappy.

  TREVOR. There are ways and ways of making a point and a tirade from a friend’s wife at a dinner party with one’s in-laws present does not go down a bomb.

  ROWENA. I thought you didn’t care about your in-laws. Make up your mind. Besides which she’s my friend, and your friend is her husband.

  TREVOR. Don’t let’s bicker. I should count myself lucky I’m not your friend’s husband. There for the grace of God etcetera.

  ROWENA. She’s very bright, you know.

  TREVOR. I didn’t say she wasn’t. She made one or two intelligent remarks underneath the neurosis, but God, the way they were put across was so fanatical. Proofreader? How could she sit down and objectively proofread a Leslie Thomas novel? No wonder their sex life is a disaster.

  ROWENA. Remember that stuff we were talking about?

  TREVOR. What stuff?

  ROWENA. Those magazines, could you bring some home? TREVOR. What for?

  ROWENA. Never looked at any before. Never know, it might improve my night life.

  TREVOR. That and a Terylene duvet.

  ROWENA. I thought my heavy breathing turned you on.

  TREVOR. I’ve managed to distinguish the sighs of ecstasy from the intermittent asthma attacks. Spoilt it a bit.

  ROWENA. What do you mean, their sex life is disastrous? How do you know?

  TREVOR. What a scatty mind. That was about twelve sentences ago.

  ROWENA. Well?

  TREVOR. Ron told me one lunchtime in the pub.

  ROWENA. Oh, do you often discuss your sex lives then? And what do you say about me, Don Juan? ‘Trouble is, Ron old chap, nudge, nudge, snigger, snigger, I can’t tell if she’s actually orgasmed or if it’s her allergy to the feather duvet.’

  TREVOR. Of course not. It just spilled out one day. No wonder he’s fed up.

  ROWENA. Couldn’t possibly be his fault though. Oh no.

  TREVOR. For God’s sake, Row, anyway I can’t bring that stuff home.

  ROWENA. Why?

  TREVOR. Well, they’ll think, I don’t know what they’d think, but it would look funny.

  ROWENA. Okay then.

  TREVOR. It’s just stupid. Tell you what, I’ll buy you a copy of Play girl instead.

  ROWENA. Thanks, oh master.

  TREVOR. Don’t mention it, my darling.

  ROWENA. Are you using the car tomorrow?

  TREVOR (teasing). Might be.

  ROWENA. Oh go on, let me. Can I, please? Clever Trevor.

  TREVOR. Might let yer.

  ROWENA. Go on. (She kisses him.)

  TREVOR. For you, anything.

  Scene Six

  RON and YVONNE at home. YVONNE is reading.

  RON. Right little ray of sunshine.

  YVONNE. So you have r
epeatedly told me.

  RON. Life and soul of the party.

  YVONNE. Let’s drop it, shall we?

  RON. When it suits you, yeah, we drop it, but then you start opening your trap in public.

  YVONNE. I didn’t bring it up, Ron, you did.

  RON. If only by way of your bloody poface.

  YVONNE. I don’t see what good it will do dragging it up again.

  She continues to read.

  RON. Oh don’t you? No, but you don’t see any point to communicating with your husband at all. Well that’s the last we’ll see of them in a long time. You know that silly cow Rowena can’t stand you.

  YVONNE. Can’t she?

  RON. Why do you think you’ve not heard from her?

  YVONNE. Well, er, I’d not thought about it.

  RON. Because, take it from me, she only sees you out of courtesy.

  YVONNE. She’s not the sort.

  RON. When was the last time she phoned? Eh?

  YVONNE. We’ve been friends for ages.

  RON. You’re an embarrassment, God, you’re so involved with yourself, you can’t see how stupid she thinks you are.

  YVONNE. She’s the only friend I’ve got.

  RON. Is that surprising? I mean, ask yourself. You want to listen to yourself, constant moan, moan, moan. Small wonder you have no friends. (Knocks the book from her hands.) You don’t even try, do you? You can’t even be bothered to talk to me. Do I really repulse you that much?

  YVONNE (picks up the book again). I’m not very happy.

  RON. You’re not happy? Christ, what d’you think I am? Over the moon, eh? Over the bloody moon. My God, my wife won’t even speak to me, barely lets me come near her. Jesus Christ, Yvonne.

  YVONNE. Please, Ron, not now.

  RON (mimicking her). Not now, not now, darling. I’ve got a headache. A bad knee, athlete’s foot, ringworm, tapeworm, aversion to sperm.

  YVONNE. I can’t take any more.

  RON. You can’t take any more? That’s rich, you spoilt bitch. I wish they’d said something on the marriage contract. After five years your wife will be fucking frigid.

  YVONNE. Ron, the neighbours.

  RON. The neighbours, the poxy bloody neighbours. We have to listen to their squeaking bedsprings half the night. I’m sure they won’t mind listening to the explanation of why they can’t hear ours. I’m sure it’ll be a relief to one and all. (To the wall:) Won’t it?

  YVONNE. Shut up.

  RON. Typical. Anything you don’t want to hear, like the truth, gets shut off. Shut out and shut up. Yvonne, you are married to me!