Plays One Page 7

  MARY. Who’d have thought the deity would say shit?

  Slight pause.

  I must go back.

  OLD WOMAN. As you wish.

  MARY. At least until she’s happily married.

  Thunder roars, lightning flashes.

  What am I saying?

  TALL WOMAN. Take it from me, Mary. She’s found something better than that load of crap.

  OLD WOMAN. There you go again.

  TALL WOMAN. Well you said shit.

  MARY. If I decide to go back, can you give me the power to put the fear of God – I beg your pardon – into those men.

  OLD WOMAN (shakes her head and smiles). I’m sorry, Mary, but we simply know no fear.

  MARY. In that case …

  I’m home.

  Immediate blackout.

  From the complete darkness we hear ROGER in his official capacity.

  ROGER. Forasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty God of his great mercy to take unto himself the soul of our dear sister here departed: we therefore commit her body to the ground, earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust;

  Lights up on MARY’s kitchen.

  DAPHNE is at the table making cucumber sandwiches. There is a tray of full sherry glasses on the table.

  ROGER and DAVID are drinking tea.

  DAVID. I really can’t thank you enough. It was a very moving service.

  ROGER. That’s quite all right, old boy. It was the very least I could do in the circumstances.

  DAVID. I only have ten years left before I retire.

  ROGER. Rotten. Rotten bad luck.

  DAPHNE (screams). Rotten bad luck. (She checks herself quietly.) Roger, she reached despair, she killed herself.

  DAVID. I’ll thank you to keep a civil tongue in your head. Mary was always very careless about leaving the oven door open. It is my opinion that she tripped up and fell asleep before she had time to get up.

  ROGER (nods). All part of God’s rich plan.

  DAPHNE. God has a wondrous philosophy, you know what it is, eh?

  ROGER. Come along, Daphners, old girl.

  DAPHNE. Do you want to know what it is, eh, David? Yes, of course you do. It is this. No sooner does one door shut than the whole fucking house falls in.

  ROGER (pats DAVID on the back). Rest assured we’re all in God’s hands.

  DAPHNE (screams, for she has now lost her head). What’s he doing then? Having a jolly good wank with us all?

  DAPHNE goes out.

  ROGER. I’m going to have to get on to Marshall over this. Do you mind if I use the phone?

  DAVID. Please do. She is obviously very sick.

  ROGER. Her guilt has turned inwards and consumed her. Shan’t be a mo.

  Both go out.

  Blackout.

  ANNA and JULIE enter.

  ANNA wears a black skirt and tee-shirt. JULIE has probably conformed to a pair of black dungarees.

  ANNA (looks round kitchen picking up things and putting them down). What didn’t I do?

  JULIE. I don’t know.

  ANNA. Was I too arrogant? Did I give her enough room to say what she wanted?

  JULIE. I don’t know.

  ANNA (smiles). And I thought you knew everything. C’mon, let’s go home.

  Both hug each other to be interrupted by DAPHNE – kicking the furniture as she re-enters.

  DAPHNE. Bastards. Gits. I’m going to kill them, I am. I’m going to strangle them with a cheese wire and I’ll not be satisfied until I see their severed heads bobbing up and down in a washing-up bowl.

  ANNA (gently). Please …

  DAPHNE. Why did she want to keep quiet, look where it got her. (Louder.) Look where it got her. She’s dead. For Chrissakes! She’s dead.

  She pulls two knobs off the cooker and gives them one each.

  There, I have metaphorically castrated your mother’s murderer, pulled the knobs off the cooker, ha ha!

  JULIE. Daphne? Please.

  DAPHNE. I’m not mad. For Christ’s sake. I’m angry. (She smiles.) Don’t worry. I’ll sabotage tonight’s salad – rinse the lettuce in Dettol.

  Blackout.

  Scene Fourteen

  MARY’s kitchen.

  ROGER and DAVID begin to set out the game of Monopoly.

  DAVID. Shall we play to the nearest ten pounds?

  ROGER. That’s not a bad idea. I’ll have to be going at three if I’m to get to see Daphne.

  DAVID. How is she these days?

  MARY (voice off, softly). David …

  DAVID is mildly disconcerted as though he has heard something far away.

  ROGER. They’ve done wonders since she first went in. When I managed to speak to the top bod he said that in all his years of psychiatric care he’d never seen anyone in such mental anguish.

  DAVID. Despite the fanatical support for Church unity one can’t help feeling that those Christian Scientists are definitely barking up the wrong tree. If the Lord hadn’t intended Largactil to be invented he wouldn’t have given men such marvellous minds.

  MARY (voice off). But David …

  DAVID seems slightly irritated but dismisses it.

  ROGER. True. Mind, Monopoly isn’t the same without her.

  DAVID. No. In fact it’s never been the same since I lost my tank.

  ROGER. Here, use the gun. The curate in my last parish told me that when Runcie was a canon he always used to play with the gun.

  MARY (off). You know where you can poke the gun.

  Tank drops from height to the table.

  ROGER. Talk of the devil. Here it is.

  DAVID. Mrs Roberts has been stupendous. I can’t imagine what we’d have done without her.

  MARY (off). Mother Almighty, what, tell me, is the point?

  Blackout.

  THE DEVIL’S GATEWAY

  The Devil’s Gateway was first presented at the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs, London, on 24 August 1983 with the following cast:

  BETTY

  Pam Ferris

  IVY

  Rita Triesman

  CAROL

  FIONA

  Lizzie Queen

  ENID

  Susan Porrett

  LINDA

  Chrissie Cotterill

  JIM

  MR GARDNER

  SOCIAL SECURITY OFFICER

  POLICEMAN

  Roger Frost

  Directed by Annie Castledine

  Designed by Annie Smart

  Lighting designed by Val Claus

  Scene One

  Second-floor flat in Bethnal Green. BETTY’s living-room which incorporates kitchen area. Although the furniture is old everything is spotlessly clean. The room is brightened by several ‘cheap’ ornaments, i.e. a brandy glass with a china cat up the side, a bright orange luminous ashtray on a stand.

  JIM and CAROL are watching Nationwide, having finished their meal, IVY is still eating hers. BETTY is washing-up.

  BETTY. Sometimes I feel like a washing-up machine on legs. I don’t know why we don’t get paper plates. (Nobody is listening.) Oh Betty, talk to yourself then.

  JIM. Bet, Bet, come on, Lady Diana’s on next.

  CAROL. You already told us, Dad.

  JIM. I know but you know what she’s like, faffing about.

  BETTY. Who’s she? Thank you very much.

  JIM. And if you miss it, who’ll get the blame? Me, that’s who. Come and sit down Bet or you’ll miss it.

  BETTY. Keep your hair on. (She dries her hands and crosses to the telly.) I can’t see her.

  JIM. That’s because they’re still talking to that bunch of headcases. I told you, she’s on after this.

  CAROL. Is Joe-Joe all right, Mum?

  JIM. Stop calling him that cissy name, Carol. He’s named after his grandad, Big Jim and Little Jim.

  BETTY (crosses to the window and looks out). They seem to be playing happily. (Pause.) Whoops.

  CAROL. What’s happened? (She gets up.)

  BETTY. Don’t worry, a little misunderstanding about w
hose trike it was but Joe-Joe has left them in no confusion.

  CAROL. Shall I call him in?

  BETTY. No, no, it’s all okay now. (She comes back to the telly and sits down.)

  JIM. Gawd, this is going on a bit. I reckon you’ve got time to put the kettle on. (BETTY pretends not to hear this.) Just look at them, would yer. Mad, mad as hatters. They should be interviewing the blokes that work there.

  CAROL. Dad, nuclear power isn’t news, it’s a fact of life and those women because they’re weird make news. Darrel reckons soon it will all be forgotten and we’ll have a spate of Alsatian dogs biting children next week.

  JIM. Huh, you wait till we get this cable TV. God only knows what sort of Russian infiltration we’ll get then.

  CAROL. Don’t be daft, it’s just a silly stunt.

  JIM. Just look at it. Look at the state of it. I’m surprised those kids haven’t been taken into care.

  BETTY. What is it?

  IVY. This potato’s got lumps in.

  BETTY. It can’t have, Mum, it’s Smash.

  IVY. Well, the water couldn’t have been hot enough. It’s cracking round me dentures.

  BETTY. D’you want some more?

  IVY. No, ta, look, can I turn over for Crossroads now?

  JIM. We haven’t seen Lady Diana yet.

  IVY. Who wants to see her? Traipsing round another nursery looking very embarrassed.

  JIM. With the baby, you daft bat.

  IVY. Another mouth to feed.

  BETTY. Go on, Mum, turn over. (BETTY gets up to make the tea.)

  IVY (switches channels by using the remote control which is on the arm of her chair). Ta Betty.

  JIM. Turn it down for the adverts – just look at that would yer, Carol? Would you look at that? Modern technology, that is, just point it at the set. No wires, no nothing. Only put one pound fifty on the rental. Can you credit that, one pound fifty for something that brilliant. You should get Darrel to invest in one.

  CAROL. He won’t have anything on HP or rental. He says (She tries to recall his exact words.) ‘It’s immediate gratification for people who live from day to day.’ (Then:) It took us a year to save for our telly but it’s worth it ’cos it’s ours.

  BETTY (from the washing-up bowl). Oh yeah, madam. For your information this is not like on the knock yer know, ’cos shall I tell you something, if anything goes wrong with our set they come out and replace it the same day. Now, if your big valve goes, that’s going to set you back another three hundred quid and that will probably mean you put your brass toilet holders in hock.

  CAROL. Gold-plated dolphin toilet-roll holders. And anyway, you’ll have paid for that set twenty times over before you’re finished, Darrel says.

  BETTY. Well, you tell Darrel, how comes he’s got a whacking great mortgage ’cos you’ll have paid fifty times over for that rabbit hutch when you’ve finished. Tell him to put that up his panatella and smoke it.

  JIM. You hoovered in here today, Bet?

  BETTY. You know full well that I do the hoovering on Wednesdays and Fridays.

  JIM. Even so it’s looking a bit grubby.

  BETTY. Maybe if we all concentrated on getting the food from our plate into our mouths instead of studying what was on the carpet we wouldn’t have time to drop it there in the first place.

  JIM. Okay, I was only asking.

  BETTY. Sorry, it’s just if I do it now, it’ll be grubby again by Friday.

  IVY. Don’t do it now. We won’t hear Crossroads.

  CAROL. Nanny, do you think we could turn over to Star Trek at a quarter to? It’s Joe-Joe’s favourite.

  IVY. He doesn’t seem too bothered to me.

  CAROL. Nanny, please.

  IVY. Fair enough. (She shouts in the direction of the window.) Son, do you want to see Star Trek? If you don’t speak up, you want Crossroads.

  CAROL. Nan! He can’t hear you.

  IVY. Nan nothing. Manners maketh man, Nan, that’s what he’s trying to say. Really he’s as anxious as me to know what happened to Diane and Mr Paul.

  CAROL. Darrel says Crossroads is bad television.

  BETTY. Lucky then that Darrel is a solicitor’s clerk and not the Controller of ITV.

  CAROL. He’s a solicitor, not a clerk.

  BETTY. I thought he was doing his columns.

  CAROL. His articles.

  JIM (to BETTY). So what have you bin doing today?

  BETTY. Well, I did the bedrooms, took the washing to the launderette.

  JIM. Yeah, you spend all week there, gassing if you ask me.

  BETTY. Then I came home. Me and mum ’ad dinner. Then we went shopping. We had to wait half hour for the bus to Stratford and half hour coming back.

  JIM (winks at CAROL). Is that all? What else did you do?

  BETTY. Cooked your bloody tea. I haven’t sat down for five minutes.

  JIM. I s’pose you and her had your dinner on the bus.

  IVY. Go on, tell big mouth what you nearly did today. That’ll show him, tiresome bugger.

  CAROL. Nanny!

  BETTY. Shut up Mum, you’re a real stirrer you are. As Enid would say, a real devil’s avocado.

  JIM. I might have guessed Enid was behind it.

  BETTY. I never did nothing. Mum, I could kill you. I never did it.

  JIM. Did what? Well, what Betty …? I’m waiting.

  BETTY. It’s nothing to get het up over. I was only thinking mind, that maybe I should go to Carol’s old school and ask if they needed a dinner lady, like, to help out.

  JIM. Have you gone stark staring crackers, woman?

  BETTY. Now Jim, Jim, now Jim, Jim. I was only thinking about it.

  JIM. How many times have I told you, Betty? For God’s sake, woman, listen once and for all. I am worried every day that the Social Security are going to catch up with me, every day. You don’t want to start going out to work and all, otherwise we’ll all be in jail and anyway, the money you’d earn would be like a piss in the ocean.

  IVY. Shut it, Brian Clough. I can’t hear the telly.

  CAROL. He’s right, Mummy, it wouldn’t be fair.

  BETTY. Yes, I only thought about it. I didn’t do anything.

  JIM. And you won’t, will ya?

  BETTY. No. (Pause.) Where on earth is John? This is the third time I’ve had to throw his tea away this week.

  JIM. He can look after hisself, Bet, don’t worry. When I was his age, perhaps a bit older, I was doing my National Service.

  BETTY. Yeah, so is he, on a YOP’s-flops course.

  JIM. Now you’re being silly.

  BETTY. Say what you like but I wouldn’t want him over in the Falklands, thank you very much.

  JIM. Nor would I Betty, nor would I, but someone had to go.

  BETTY. Why?

  JIM. What do you mean, why? Because the people of this country are not going to be pushed around.

  IVY. Since when?

  JIM. Are you watching Crossroads or not?

  CAROL. I’ll make the tea, Mum. (She gets up to pour the tea.)

  BETTY. I don’t see why they couldn’t have played a football match over them.

  JIM. You are being totally ridiculous, Betty.

  CAROL. It’s more complex than that, Mummy.

  IVY. For a start, two Argentinians play for Spurs.

  BETTY. Huh, load of silly boys’ games if you ask me, but then they never grow up, do they, Carol?

  CAROL. I hope you’re not including Darrel in that? He supports Women’s Lib. Won’t hear a word against Mrs T. and let’s face it, she gave the orders.

  BETTY. Well, I never liked her much.

  JIM. No one in their right mind does.

  BETTY. The only nice thing about her is her hairdo.

  JIM. That’s right, you stick to something you know about. You know something, my wife’s so outta touch with the world she thought the handbrake in the car was the clutch because you clutched it in your hand. It wasn’t until I paid out for a driving instructor and he asked her to put her foot o
n the clutch that she learned her lesson.

  BETTY. Bloody sprained my ankle trying to stamp on that stick from a sitting position.

  CAROL. I’ve heard all this one hundred times.

  IVY. You’ll hear it a hundred times more and all. It’s a real bone of contention between them.

  JIM. Complete waste of money more like.

  BETTY. They were your idea.

  JIM. Only ’cos you kept moaning.

  BETTY. Anyhow, we had to get rid of the car so where’s the point in going on about it?

  JIM. See this, Carol, and take note not to get like this at her age. Nothing suits her, and course to get out of it, she reckons men, who let’s face it, run the world without fussing about hairdos, are little boys. I ask you.

  BETTY. Don’t you remember, Jim, when you worked on the print and found out how close this country came to it in that Cuban crisis? You were only little at the time, Carol, and that night we stood over your bed and cried, didn’t we, Jim?

  JIM. You did, Betty. I had a bad cold if you remember.

  BETTY. And we said what sort of world had we brought her into.

  CAROL. Better watch out, Dad, or we’ll be seeing mum chained to the railings in some windswept corner of the woods.

  JIM. Huh, she can’t even find her way to the launderette, let alone Newbury bog.

  BETTY. What is? What are you talking about?

  JIM. Those women on the telly.

  BETTY. What? What’s he on about?

  CAROL. Where’ve you been? There are a group of women living rough on some common as a protest.

  BETTY. What protest? What common?

  CAROL. They don’t like the idea of nuclear weapons.

  BETTY. Oh. (Pause.) Does anyone?

  CAROL. But it’s a bit naive, not to say daft.

  BETTY. But why live on a common? Why not sit in the Houses of Parliament?

  JIM (exasperated). Because the common is where the government is hoping to put the missiles.

  BETTY. Oh.

  JIM. It’s silly because they think they’ll stop them. Ha ha ha. Bunch of lunatics.

  CAROL. But if misguided people did sit up and take notice, then we’d be in a worse mess. Just because we get rid of weapons, the Russians won’t, and we’ll have cut our own throats, literally. Darrel says.