Plays One Page 18

  TREVOR (lightly). I’ve started so I’ll finish. I might be able to understand if I were a real pig but don’t forget I was the one who introduced you to the Female Eunuch – the book as opposed to Yvonne.

  ROWENA (unbelieving). Trevor!

  TREVOR. Don’t I do my share of the housework, the shopping, cooking … ?

  ROWENA. And don’t you always make a big show about it. Tell me what you’ve done; running to me for approval.

  TREVOR. Don’t twist things.

  ROWENA. How many things do I do that go without recognition? Do I come running to you to say, ‘Oh, Trevor look what I’ve done. The washing, the ironing, made the bed.’?

  TREVOR. I’ve made the bed. It consists of straightening the duvet which takes approximately one second.

  ROWENA. You know what I mean.

  TREVOR. I’ve never raped anyone. I’ve never so much as attacked a single woman.

  ROWENA. So that makes it okay.

  TREVOR. In my book I should think so …

  ROWENA. For other men to do it …

  TREVOR. What can I do about that?

  ROWENA. You could do something … I don’t know, write, complain, about these … sex shops …

  TREVOR. Sex shops? What do you know about them? They sell sex aids for men and women.

  ROWENA (picking up a magazine). According to this ad they sell whips, canes, dog collars, masks, hard-core porn, inflatable life-size dolls, torsos and electric vaginas for men to masturbate into. And it must be true because there it is – the mail order form.

  TREVOR. All right, all right, don’t lecture me for Chrissake.

  ROWENA. I want you to understand.

  TREVOR. To understand? To understand what? That you want total hostility between people in the street?

  ROWENA. Trev …

  TREVOR. Well, that’s what you’ve got in your own back garden.

  TREVOR goes out. Lights fade.

  (Interval.)

  Scene Nine

  ROWENA with a PSYCHIATRIST.

  PSYCHIATRIST. And you claim, Mrs Jefferson-Stone, that looking at pornography was the turning-point?

  ROWENA. Yes.

  PSYCHIATRIST. Enough of a turning-point to make you try to kill a man?

  ROWENA. Yes.

  PSYCHIATRIST. Would it also be true that you became obsessed with pornographic material?

  ROWENA. I became obsessed with the way women are viewed by men.

  PSYCHIATRIST. How did your feelings manifest themselves at the time?

  ROWENA. I became extremely angry.

  PSYCHIATRIST. Even though, subjectively, you had never been exposed to or threatened by sexual assault?

  ROWENA. I felt sexually assaulted every time I went out – adverts for everything from oranges to Opels, all sold with women’s breasts.

  PSYCHIATRIST. You became prudish?

  ROWENA. If that means I found it unacceptable, yes, I became prudish.

  PSYCHIATRIST. Can you specify – pinpoint – what exactly you objected to?

  ROWENA. The objectification of women.

  PSYCHIATRIST. If you’ll forgive me for saying so, you don’t strike me as the type of woman to be fanatical about this sort of thing.

  ROWENA. What sort of women would you expect to be angry at the way women’s bodies are cut up, mutilated and violated for entertainment value?

  PSYCHIATRIST. For a start you’re wearing a skirt.

  ROWENA. I am fully dressed, or had that escaped your notice?

  PSYCHIATRIST. In the light of the conversation, indeed, it had not.

  ROWENA (abruptly turns her chair away, then to herself). I have tried …

  PSYCHIATRIST. To do what? Murder an innocent man.

  ROWENA roars with laughter.

  Mrs Stone, you are becoming evasive.

  ROWENA. Why? Because I’m wearing a skirt?

  PSYCHIATRIST. And incongruent.

  ROWENA. I must try and answer the questions a little more articulately then. In reply to the question of my dress which seems to fascinate you.

  PSYCHIATRIST. I didn’t say that.

  ROWENA. I could say, I can continuously compromise my iconoclasm with conformist clothing camouflage when complying with the correctness demanded of ceremonies such as these.

  PSYCHIATRIST. That does not give much away except perhaps an obsession with the letter ‘c’.

  ROWENA laughs.

  You lost all sense of reality at this time.

  ROWENA. Quite the opposite. I gained all sense of reality.

  PSYCHIATRIST. You also lost your sense of humour. That’s true, is it not?

  ROWENA. How can it be? You’ve made me laugh twice.

  PSYCHIATRIST. As you are quite well aware, on neither occasion was I making a joke.

  ROWENA. Then maybe you’re in the wrong profession.

  PSYCHIATRIST. What I meant was, I am given to understand, that during the last few months you wore jeans constantly.

  ROWENA. If you believe that’s a symptom of madness, I’d keep quiet if I were you.

  PSYCHIATRIST. And in the last six months before you left your husband, your sexual life was unsatisfactory.

  ROWENA. No. We didn’t do it, which was very satisfactory as far as I’m concerned.

  PSYCHIATRIST. And this contributed to your feelings of inadequacy.

  ROWENA. I didn’t feel inadequate.

  PSYCHIATRIST. Do you masturbate?

  ROWENA (thinks – ‘I don’t believe this’). Do you?

  PSYCHIATRIST. I believe you’ve been seen by various colleagues of mine.

  ROWENA. Indeed I’ve been subjected to a psychiatric battering.

  PSYCHIATRIST (trying to look at the reports in front of him with discretion). Tell me about your relationship with your mother.

  ROWENA. Go to hell.

  PSYCHIATRIST. Would you concede that your opinionated and dogmatic nature shows an insecure assertiveness?

  ROWENA. Tell me, would you concede, that you are a wanker?

  PSYCHIATRIST. Mrs Stone, I am not of the opinion that you are insane and were it not for the seriousness of your crime be quite prepared to put it down to the premenstrual tension, PMT factor.

  ROWENA. What, for 365 days of the year? Why that is magnanimous of you.

  Scene Ten

  HILARY and RON at work. HILARY is filing or trying to get on with some appropriate office work. RON is merely being ‘friendly’, i.e. he does not grope her, neither are his words loaded with lust.

  RON. How’s it going, Hilary?

  HILARY. Okay, thanks, Mr Hughes.

  RON. Good. Enjoyed your first few weeks with us?

  HILARY. Very much, thank you.

  RON. I’m glad to see you like the job.

  HILARY. Ta.

  RON. Good, good.

  Pause.

  HILARY. Nothing wrong is there? I mean, I’m sorry about those invoices but it was the photocopier really.

  RON. No, no, it could happen to anyone. I thought we could go for a drink at lunchtime.

  HILARY. It’s okay, thanks, I don’t drink lunchtimes, it makes me nod off in the afternoon, know what I mean?

  RON. A coke then?

  HILARY. I never drink coke, ta.

  RON. How about after work then?

  HILARY. I’ve got to collect me little boy.

  RON. I thought your mother did that.

  HILARY. From the nursery but I have to go straight to her place of work.

  RON. Well, tomorrow lunchtime it is then.

  HILARY. It’s really very kind but I have to do me shopping lunchtimes.

  RON. Kind, nothing, I always take new members of staff to lunch. It’s a tradition.

  HILARY. Oh.

  RON (jokey). No need to sound so enthusiastic.

  HILARY. I’m sorry, Mr Hughes.

  RON. Ron.

  HILARY. Ron.

  RON. Are you finding it too long a day?

  HILARY. Oh no, it’s great really. No, it’s just right.


  RON. How far do you go?

  HILARY. Pardon?

  RON. How far do you have to travel?

  HILARY. Oh, it’s easy on the tube.

  RON. Where do you live again?

  HILARY. Er, like I say, it’s only twenty minutes on the tube.

  RON. I remember now. Finsbury Park. How silly of me. I go that way most evenings. I can drop you off.

  HILARY. It’s very nice of you but …

  RON. No buts … It’s no trouble.

  Scene Eleven

  JENNIFER and CLIVE’s living-room. CLIVE is about to watch a video. He puts it in the recorder but doesn’t get a chance to switch it on. Enter JENNIFER.

  JENNIFER. Did you buy it?

  CLIVE. No, my darling, I hired it.

  JENNIFER. Oh no, Clive, how many times do I have to tell you? It’s a racket. Hiring of videos is just a front for those places to get your address. Now we’ll get the damn thing pinched again.

  CLIVE. I don’t see why that should bother you.

  JENNIFER. And what has my husband got to entertain himself with? (She picks up the cassette case.) Violate the Bitch. Don’t you have something a little more romantic, say in French with subtitles, Violez la biche, so much prettier don’t you think?

  CLIVE. Who rattled your cage?

  JENNIFER. Rattled. Me?

  CLIVE. Go to bed.

  JENNIFER. What makes you think I want to go to sleep?

  CLIVE. When it comes to a toss up between sleep or my company with regard to entertainment potential, sleep usually wins. (Pause.) What’s the matter?

  JENNIFER. I’m bored. It’s hell.

  CLIVE. True.

  JENNIFER. I think I was biologically determined to be bored. My first rattle probably bored me.

  CLIVE. People who are bored are usually extremely boring. Why don’t you sit down and watch this with me? It might rejuvenate your interest in other toys.

  JENNIFER. The only movement to come out of the dying embers, darling, is the bloody death rattle.

  CLIVE (weary). Oh, go to hell.

  JENNIFER. What do you mean, go? Heavens, don’t try to tell me that there’s a worse existence than this. Perhaps I’d better ring the Samaritans.

  CLIVE. Ring the blasted Pope for all I care, but stop opening and shutting your poisonous mouth before the verbal battering does permanent damage to my ears.

  JENNIFER. Fine. When you stop martyring yourself and stop wimping about like a henpecked eunuch and stop watching this filth.

  CLIVE. I have had enough.

  JENNIFER. I would have thought so, yes, but in the light of your unsociable viewing hours, the odds are stacked against you. If you’re henpecked, what does that make me – cocksucked?

  CLIVE. Hardly.

  JENNIFER (picks up the video). What do you have to buy all this trash for?

  CLIVE. You’re so narrow-minded.

  JENNIFER. I bloody well am not.

  CLIVE. If I’d imagined for one minute how you’d have turned out, I’d never have married you.

  JENNIFER. And if I’d known you’d knock off three secretaries concurrently, maybe I’d have thought twice about marrying you.

  CLIVE. At least they didn’t nag.

  JENNIFER. Nag? You know why the dog is considered man’s best friend? Because you can hit, shout at and abuse dogs and they still come back for affection.

  CLIVE. Whereas women sulk.

  JENNIFER. Or worse still, kick back and commit crimes of disobedience. A nag by any other name.

  CLIVE. Then I suggest you stop making yourself hoarse.

  JENNIFER. Ha, ha, ha.

  CLIVE. You, do you know something? You’re mad, mad as a hatter, you should have been certified years ago.

  JENNIFER. Thanks a bunch. And if they’d used you as a yardstick to measure sanity by I would have been. If you’re the walking, breathing model of normality, it’s a compliment to be mad.

  CLIVE. Jesus, I feel sorry for your first husband. It must have been the biggest relief of his life when he dropped dead.

  JENNIFER. Shut up.

  CLIVE. And your freaky children, God, not that I don’t feel sorry for them. Having you as a mother must surely qualify them for some state benefit.

  JENNIFER (sarcastic). Oh, but of course having you as a stepfather made up for all that.

  CLIVE. At least I get on far better than you ever did with your foul daughter and son-in-law.

  JENNIFER. It’s not her. It’s him. Creep.

  CLIVE. You were pleased as punch when she married him.

  JENNIFER. I must have been in a trance, persuading myself that a man whose only asset was a double-barrelled name would make my daughter happy. It’s a scientifically known fact that to have a brain and a double-barrelled name is a genetic impossibility.

  CLIVE. At least they’ve dropped the other name and the hyphen.

  JENNIFER. I haven’t heard from her since then.

  CLIVE (sarcastic). Oh dear, that’s come as a big shock.

  JENNIFER. I wonder if anything’s wrong.

  CLIVE. What could possibly be wrong? The discovery that beanshoot and lentil quiche gives you cancer? She can’t stuff another green pepper because it’s ideologically unsound to penetrate vegetables.

  JENNIFER. Frankly, you couldn’t stick your prick into a green pepper properly.

  CLIVE. My dear, a green pepper certainly has more feeling than you do.

  JENNIFER. Oh Clive, I hope we’re not getting into one of our na, na, na, na, silly arguments.

  CLIVE. You started it.

  JENNIFER. We are.

  The doorbell rings.

  CLIVE. Jesus, who the hell can that be at this hour?

  JENNIFER. Probably one of the video burglars. You answer it in a manly voice.

  CLIVE opens the door.

  CLIVE. Rowena.

  ROWENA. Clive.

  CLIVE. Good grief, we were just talking about you, weren’t we, darling?

  JENNIFER. Rowena, are you all right? What on earth are you doing here? Is Trevor with you?

  ROWENA. I’m on my own, Mother. Nothing’s wrong. Just hadn’t seen you for a long time. Sorry I didn’t get round to ringing back when you called. How are you both?

  CLIVE (puts his arm round JENNIFER). We’re fine, absolutely. At one. Aren’t we darling?

  JENNIFER (smiling). Ace.

  ROWENA. Mum, I er, I wanted to talk to you.

  JENNIFER. Oh dear, I rather think you pre-empted this conversation by giving me a copy of My Mother Myself last Christmas.

  CLIVE. I think I’d better be making tracks. It’s nice to see you Rowena. Maybe you and Trevor could come down for a weekend some time.

  ROWENA. Thank you, Clive.

  CLIVE. Good night all. (He kisses JENNIFER.)

  JENNIFER. Good night, darling.

  CLIVE goes off.

  ROWENA. I feel rather silly coming this late at night.

  JENNIFER. Nonsense, dear. Clive always reckons I’m less able to relax than a sex maniac dosed with Spanish Fly. Sorry, I forgot you get paid not to mock the afflicted.

  ROWENA. Mother, do you have to act batty all the time?

  JENNIFER. Do you want me to act bitter?

  ROWENA. It was a stupid idea me coming to see you.

  JENNIFER (sits down). Rowena, I am far too inhibited to proceed into an embarrassing mother-daughter baring of soul, but I am only half as obnoxious as I appear. What brings you here?

  ROWENA. Nothing, I only wanted a chat. Have you seen anything of Mark?

  JENNIFER. Unfortunately, Clive had rather an aversion to him. Ever since he wore that earring to mum’s funeral. Mark, I mean, not Clive. God, Clive thinks it’s cissy to carry a handkerchief. Hence he always appears more sniffy than cissy.

  ROWENA. I thought Clive liked Mark.

  JENNIFER. Did you? I should never have married a younger man.

  ROWENA. At least I didn’t make that mistake.

  JENNIFER. No, you married that big dick Trevor.<
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  ROWENA. Mother.

  JENNIFER. Sorry, little prick.

  They both laugh.

  ROWENA. Are you and Clive happy?

  Silence.

  JENNIFER. No.

  ROWENA. Oh? You always seem so happy to me.

  JENNIFER. Why do you ask then?

  Brief pause.

  Since the time I married him, Clive has had numerous affairs and what did I do? I read all the right books, I became a perfect cook in the kitchen, perfect hostess in the dining-room and perfect mistress in the bedroom. When that failed, I became mistress in the bedroom, bathroom, living-room, kitchen and lavatory.

  ROWENA. Why are you telling me all this?

  JENNIFER. Because you bloody well asked and because it was part of a big fat lie which accumulated in the notion that a facelift at forty would make me happy. When it didn’t I stopped bending over backwards, literally, for him, and instead unleashed the acrimonious recriminations which I’d kept bottled up for years.

  ROWENA. I’m sorry, I never knew.

  JENNIFER. I don’t want your pity. I’ve given as good as I’ve got, well, nearly. If I kill him I’ll rot in prison as an evil scheming bitch. If he kills me he’ll get a suspended sentence because I was neurotic and nagged. We are always responsible for their crimes but we carry the can for our own.

  ROWENA. Does he still have affairs?

  JENNIFER. He tries but he can’t fulfil the false image in his head of how a woman should behave.

  ROWENA. Because women’s sexual identity has been manufactured.

  JENNIFER. Perhaps you should write an article in Community Care.

  ROWENA. Do you remember that night we went out to dinner?

  JENNIFER. How could I forget?

  ROWENA. Did you think Yvonne made sense?

  JENNIFER. Oh yes.

  ROWENA. Why didn’t you back her up?

  JENNIFER. I wasn’t aware it was a debate. Next time I’ll round up a chief whip. Look, darling, it’s no good putting your head in the sand and crying about it.

  ROWENA. Why not?

  JENNIFER. For one thing you get grit in your eyelids. (Pause.) Sorry. (She sighs.) It’s late. I’d better switch the electric blanket on in the spare bed. I take it you’re staying, course you are. I’ve forgotten whether you’re a breakfast person or not.

  ROWENA. I don’t think you ever knew.

  JENNIFER. Huh, many’s the time I can remember mediating between you and Mark over who had the most Rice Crispies. It was practically bloody lunchtime before you two actually got round to eating them after listening to them going snap crackle and pop for hours. Anyway, you’ll have to make do with toast.