AS I WAS SAYING.

TWO MEN AND A WOMAN ON A BEACH AND THEIR SEARCH FOR TRUTH.

                   AS I WAS SAYING.

        

            A

       PLAY

          BY

     T.J.COLLETT.

 

 

 

                

          Act One.

          Scene One.

 

Two men and a woman sit on three deckchairs on a beach facing the sea in a semicircle but close together. Behind them the façade of hotels and shops. The two men are named Thomas and Richard. The woman’s name is Harriet. All are middle aged.

 

Richard: The sea’s calm.

 

Thomas: The tide’s out.

 

Harriet: Looks nice and peaceful.

 

Richard: Sea can be dangerous.

 

Thomas: I like it calm.

 

Harriet: I prefer it when it’s rough and untamed. It shows its true beauty then.

 

Thomas: People can be killed in rough seas. (Pause)

 

Richard: The sea is calm. It soothes me with its calmness.

 

Thomas: My brother drowned in the sea.

 

Harriet: Did he? (Looks at Thomas and raises her eyebrows. Then looks back at the sea.)

 

Richard: Shelley drowned at sea.

 

Thomas: Drowned down at Brighton.

 

Harriet: Who, Shelley?

 

Thomas: No, my brother.

 

Richard: How did he drown?

 

Harriet: Who, Shelley?

 

Thomas: No, my brother. He went down to Brighton with his friends on a stag night binge, and afterwards walked out in the sea and drowned.

 

Harriet: Why did he walk out in the sea?

 

Thomas: He was drunk. People do silly things when they’re drunk.

 

Harriet: Like drown? Couldn’t he have found something less dangerous to do?

 

Richard: Didn’t his friends try to save him?

 

Thomas: They were drunk too. Too drunk to do much in the way of saving him.

 

Harriet: That’s men for you. No consideration for others.

 

Thomas: They did call out to him. But he didn’t hear them. They waved and called, but he just waved back like some idiot. (Thomas gets out his handkerchief and blows his nose. Wipes his nose while the other two stare at him)

He always was a little hard of hearing. Too much loud music our father said. (Wipes his nose again. The other two stare out at the sea.)

 

Richard: The sea is very calm.

 

Harriet: Did he like loud music?

 

Thomas: Who?

 

Harriet: Your brother. Did he like loud music?

 

Thomas: Yes. He loved his music loud. Mainly because he was a little hard of hearing.

 

Richard: There are ships on the horizon. Three of them. Two large ones and a small one.

 

Thomas: He should not have gone out and drank so much. He would still be here now if he’d not drunk so much.

 

Richard: I think one’s a tanker of some kind.

 

Harriet: I bet his fiancé wasn’t too happy about him drowning at sea.

 

Thomas: She was quite put out by it. Only just bought the bridesmaids dresses. She’d spent a lot of her time picking them out and finding the right match.

 

Harriet: Yes, it can take time finding the colours to match. My cousin had an awful time getting the right colours to match.

 

Richard: The large one on the right is a tanker, I’m sure. Not that I’m an expert on ships, but it looks like a tanker to me.

 

Thomas: Mother was terrible about it all. She cried on and off for weeks. Father couldn’t console her no matter what he said or did.

 

Richard: Wasn’t your father at sea?

 

Thomas: During the War. He was frequently seasick he told us.

 

Richard: My father was a Desert Rat. Saw Monty a few times he told me.

 

Harriet: So what happened to your brother’s fiancé?

 

Thomas: She married some young Jewish fellow called Stein something or other.

 

Richard: Very hot, my father told me, out in the desert.

 

Harriet: How long afterwards was the wedding?

 

Thomas: A year, I think. Pretty girl as I remember. Liked a pretty girl did our Gerald.

 

Richard: I prefer the sea. I’d have chosen the navy if it had been me during the War.

 

 

 

Thomas: She wasn’t his first choice. He had his eyes on Milly Haggerd, but she went off with that Bruce Budgewig. Gerald was none too pleased. He’d spent a tidy fortune on her trying to get her to…

 

Richard: Torpedoed a few times, your father was, so my father said.

 

Harriet: Whom did your mother want him to marry? Mothers have an eye for their son’s wife.

 

 

Thomas: I think it is a tanker. (Peers out at the sea intensely.)

 

Richard: And the following one’s a liner.

 

Harriet: My mother wanted me to marry a son of her friend. I only met him twice. He wasn't up to much.

 

Richard: Was he torpedoed?

 

Thomas: Who?

 

Richard: Your father.

 

Thomas: Yes. Twice. Said it became a bit of a routine in the end. Almost expected it.

 

Harriet: Yes, he did, I think. But I wasn't having any of it. I told my mother, I’d find my own husband, thank you very much. Son of her friend indeed.

 

Richard: Got up on a tank and spoke to the men.

 

Thomas: Who?

 

Richard: Monty. Montgomery.

 

Harriet: That tanker's gone now. (She peers out to sea. Richard stands up and stretches his arms above his head. Then looks out at the sea.)

 

Thomas: I knew a man called Montgomery.

 

Richard: Not the Montgomery?

 

Thomas: No. This one was a part-time actor. He did small parts.

 

Harriet: Her son had small parts...So I was told.

 

Thomas: Married a dancer from up West.

 

Richard: Up West?

 

Thomas: West End of London. Bit seedy.

 

Harriet: I wasn't that type of girl. I told him that.

 

Richard: The liner's gone now. (Still standing he walks forward a few paces.)

 

Thomas: Out of sight. Wonder where she was off to? Somewhere nice, I bet. Looks like she went off over the end of the Earth.

 

Harriet: He was a bit seedy. Mind you most men are.

 

Richard: Fancy a bite to eat?

 

Thomas: Yes. Fine by me. (Stands up and walks to Richard. They both look at Harriet.)

Are you coming along, Harriet?

 

Harriet: Coming along, where?

 

Richard: A bite to eat. Up there somewhere.

 

Thomas: The sea's calm. (They all look out at the sea. Then after a few minutes, they walk up stage. Curtain falls.  

 

              

          END OF SCENE ONE.

 

 

 

 

                

        Scene Two.

 

Two hours later on the beach, Thomas and Harriet sit alone in two of the three deck chairs. Thomas sits back in his chair staring out at the sea. Harriet sits forward her hands fiddling with a cigarette packet deciding whether to open it or not. She finally decides to open it and withdraws a cigarette. She places the cigarette between her lips and puts the packet away in her bag, which is on her lap. She lifts the bag up and places it on the beach beside her chair.

 

Thomas: We should have waited for him.

 

Harriet: Richard will know where we are. (Lights her cigarette with a lighter from her skirt pocket. Then she looks at it for a few seconds before placing it back in her pocket.)  Have you known Richard long?

 

Thomas: We were at boarding school together.

 

Harriet: He mentioned boarding school, but he never mentioned you until yesterday.

 

Thomas: We were in the same dormitory for years.

 

Harriet: Sounds fun. (Draws on her cigarette and releases a slow out pouring of smoke.) He never mentioned about sharing a dormitory with you.

 

Thomas: We also went to St. John’s College together when we were eighteen.

 

Harriet: Share a dormitory there, too?

 

Thomas: No. We had rooms close by, though.

 

Harriet: He never mentioned you at that college neither.

 

Thomas: Have you known Richard long?

 

Harriet: About six months. We met at a musician’s convention.

 

Thomas: Does he still write music?

 

Harriet: He seems to. Shuts himself away in his little music room and tinkers on his piano for hours on end some days. (Stands up and walks forward a few paces. She puts out her cigarette and drops it on the beach.) The sea’s getting rougher.

 

Thomas: Do you and Richard live together?

 

Harriet: That’s quite a personal question, Thomas. I shouldn’t be answering questions like that should I? (She turns towards him and gives him a cool look.)

 

Thomas: Not if you choose not to. I was just wondering.

 

Harriet: Maybe you should ask Richard. He’s your friend after all. He won’t want to hide things from you I don’t suppose. (Harriet looks back at the sea.)

 

Thomas: I hadn’t seen Richard since 1966 until last Friday.

 

Harriet: The sea endlessly comes in and goes out day after day. You’d think it would get bored doing that so endlessly, wouldn’t you. I know I would. I hate boring routines.

 

Thomas: Are you sure, he’ll find us here? (Thomas stands up and looks back up towards the hotels and shops. After a few moments, he walks towards Harriet and stands beside her looking out at the sea.)

 

Harriet: He’ll find us. He could find a pin in a haystack. (She looks sideways at Thomas and stares with screwed up eyes for a few moments.) For a musician he’s got a lousy voice. (She looks away and stares at the sea.)

 

Thomas: He always did have a useless singing voice. I’m surprised he managed to write music at all.

 

Harriet: He hums.

 

Thomas: He what?

 

Harriet: Hums. He hums his melodies or whatever it is he calls those things he writes down. It sounds like he’s keeping bees in that music room of his some days.

 

Thomas: Wasn’t he married? I thought I read somewhere he’d got married.

 

Harriet: Yes. He did mention some woman he’d married some years back. Divorced now. (Looks back towards the landscape behind her.) Are you married, Thomas?

 

Thomas: Married once. Not anymore.

 

Harriet: Divorce?

 

Thomas: No. She died. (Moves away from Harriet and sits down in his deckchair again. Harriet follows and does likewise.)

 

Harriet: Oh. Sorry. My big mouth and me.

 

Thomas: You weren’t to know.

 

Harriet: I should have been more cautious. I never think before I speak. Richard’s always telling me to use my brain before my tongue.

 

Thomas: I should have said. She was a good woman. She died because some idiot ran her over one night.

 

Harriet: How awful. (Harriet searches for her cigarette packet finds it, withdraws one, and offers them to Thomas who refuses. She puts a cigarette in her mouth and then puts the cigarette packet a way.)

 

Thomas: The tides coming in.

 

Harriet: Seems closer than it was before lunch.

 

Thomas: Seems rougher too.

 

Harriet: Not as calm as it was. (Silence falls upon them. They gaze out at the sea.)

 

 The curtain falls.

                                     End of scene two.                  

 

 

 

 

 

     Scene Three.

 

A half an hour has passed and Thomas and Richard sit on two of the three deckchairs on the beach. Richard is looking behind him up towards the hotels and shops. Thomas is looking out at the seascape.

 

Richard: Where did Harriet say she was going?

 

Thomas: Said she was going to the pier to look for a fortune-teller.

 

Richard: Fortune-teller?

 

Thomas: That’s what she said. One of those gypsy tent things they have on piers.

 

Richard: Can’t make her out sometimes. She has some weird notions that completely baffle me. She often tries to read tealeaves from my cup. Or grabs my hand and attempts to read my palm.

 

Thomas: Perhaps she is just trying to get close to you.

 

Richard: She is close to me. We share a house. We share a bed. How much closer does she want to get? (Richard stands up and looks out at the sea. He walks a few paces forward.)

 

Thomas: She does not seem your type. I thought you were more one for the intellectual kind of woman.

 

Richard: I have had my fill of intellectual women. (Pause. Looks back at Thomas.) I had a woman a few years back with a brain Einstein would have been proud to own, but she was like a fish in bed.( Goes back to his deckchair and sits down again.)

 

Thomas: How did you meet, Harriet?

 

Richard: Musician’s convention.

 

Thomas: Is she a musician?

 

Richard: No. She was with some pianist who treated her like a slave.

 

Thomas: And you moved in on her?

 

Richard: You make me sound like some shark. No, we got talking over a few drinks and one thing led to another and here we are.

 

Thomas: Sounds romantic. Like something out of one of my books. Have you read any of my books lately?

 

Richard: No, I try to avoid them. You write like a woman. What happened to that Thomas I knew at university who was going to be the next Lawrence?

 

Thomas: He became poor and needed to make some money. (Pause. Both men sit in silence. They look at each other momentarily, then back out to sea.)

 

Richard: The sea’s coming quite close now.

 

Thomas: Yes, you can smell the salt.

 

Richard: Where is she? Thought she’d be back by now.

 

Thomas: And if you close your eyes, you can hear the sea’s voice more intensely. I often did that as a child. I’d close my eyes and listen to the sea’s waves rush up the beach and suck the pebbles as it withdrew. (Thomas smiles to himself in deep thought.) I went with my grandparents once to Ramsgate and we had the top rooms of this boarding house. My cousin got out his telescope and showed me the sea through it. It seemed as if it were just out side the window and that if I opened the window the sea would pour right in on us. (Looks at Richard who is gazing at his shoes.) Strange what you think when you are a child.

 

Richard: She wants a child.

 

Thomas: Who?

 

Richard: Harriet. She wants a baby.

 

Thomas: Isn’t she a bit old to be thinking of babies?

 

Richard: She’s only thirty-two. You make her out to be ancient.

 

Thomas: Thirty-two? Sounds young when you say it quick. Why does she want a baby, now?

 

Richard: Says she doesn’t feel complete unless she has one.

 

Thomas: Have you any children of your own?

 

Richard: No. I’ve never been interested in having children. I let others with more time and less talent have children. I need my time and energy for my music.

 

Thomas: Have you told her that?

 

Richard: Not in so many words. I have hinted at it.

 

Thomas: How many words did you use?

 

Richard: One should have been sufficient. But she doesn’t listen. Thinks I’ll come round to the idea when it happens. I think she’s even skipped her pill now. I can’t be using…where is she?

 

Thomas: The sea’s getting calmer. I like to sit and sense the power of nature near me. Makes you realise how small you are in the order of things. My brother learnt too late. My wife learnt too late. I wonder if I’ll learn too late?

(Thomas shakes his head, then sits back in his chair, and stares out at the sea. Richard looks up at the sky, then slowly lowers his gaze and looks back towards the hotels and shops.)

 

             Curtains fall.

  

                                 End of scene three.

 

 

                                

 

 

 

 

 

 

              Scene Four.

 

Richard and Harriet are sitting in two of the three deckchairs on the beach. Richard is staring out at the sea. Harriet is smoking a cigarette and staring at her bare feet.

 

Richard: He's changed.

 

Harriet: Who's changed?

 

Richard: Thomas. Changed completely. I'd not have thought he would have changed so much in such a space of time.

 

Harriet: People do. They change, as they grow older. My mother did. She used to be a good laugh when I was a child, but as she grew old, she became crabby and used to moan a lot. I suppose it comes with age. Age changes you.

 

Richard: He used to be quite adventurous. Wanted to do things to change the world. Now he just writes sloppy romance books under a pseudo name. How do people change so much?

 

Harriet: He's had a sad life.

 

Richard: Who?

 

Harriet: Thomas. He's had a sad life. What with his brother drowning and then his wife being knocked over by some drunk...Enough to make anyone write romances.

 

Richard: What do you think of him?

 

Harriet: I think he's quite a sad individual.

 

Richard: He used to have a good brain on him. He had bright prospects. Could have gone places.

 

Harriet: Such are the plans of cats and mice.

 

Richard: It's mice and men.

 

Harriet: What's mice and men?

 

Richard: The quotation you just used. It's mice and men, not cats and mice.

 

Harriet: Does it matter if it's cats and mice rather than mice and men? After all, Richard, cats and mice have something in common. Men and mice don't.

 

Richard: That's an example of women's logic is it? (Pause. Harriet looks side wards at Richard. Her eyes stay on him for a few seconds. He returns her gaze and they gaze at each other for a minute or two in silence.) Why quote something and change it? (Harriet pulls a face and sticks out her tongue. Richard shakes his head and looks back at the sea.)

 

Harriet: I wish I could swim. I would love to swim. Be able to float out with my arms out stretched.

 

Richard: You should have learnt to swim. Why moan about something you could have changed by your own efforts?

 

Harriet: I'm afraid of water.

 

Richard: Afraid of water? No one can be afraid of water, surely.

 

Harriet: I am. Always have been. Since I was a child.

 

Richard: Talking about children, are you still wanting this baby?

 

Harriet: More than you will ever know, Richard. I want it more than life itself. I want it as much as I have ever wanted anything.

 

Richard: Why did you leave it so late in life? Why not earlier when you were younger?

 

Harriet: I never realised then how much I wanted a baby. I never thought about it, then. But now I realise just what it is that has been missing in my life. (Pause.) When you are young you think you have all the time in the world to have a baby. Then, one day, you realise just how much time has flown and how old you're getting. You think you can wait, but time doesn't wait. I want a baby, Richard. I want my own baby.

 

Richard: You know, I never really wanted a baby. They always seemed to be part of someone else's world, never mine. I used to feel tied down by the mere thought of having a child and that child relying on me.

 

Harriet: What's changed?

 

Richard: That's just the point, Harriet, nothing has changed. I feel a child would tie me down and all my free time and inspiration would be taken up with feed times and nappy changing.

 

Harriet: I could do those things. You'd not be lumbered with those chores. You could still shut yourself away in your room and hum away to your hearts content. I just need you to...

 

Richard: Those seagulls make a hell of a noise.

 

Harriet: I need you to...

 

Richard: When I was a boy, I always associated seagulls with the seaside. I would listen out for them as the train entered the station and we traipsed up towards the sea front. Funny how memories of childhood seem so vivid.

 

Harriet: I want a baby. I want one before I get too old to look after it. I need you to...

 

Richard: And the smell of seaweed. I love the smell of seaweed. I can close my eyes and the mere smell takes me back to my childhood by the sea.

(Pause. He stands and walks a few paces towards the sea. Harriet stares at his back.) The sea. What a fantastic thing it is. Covers so much of the earth's surface. And unexplored at its very depths. The sea. (Smiles to himself in deep thought.)

 

Harriet: I'd do anything for a baby. I'd do anything necessary to get pregnant. (Harriet takes out a cigarette and lights it with her lighter, then replaces the lighter.)

Thomas likes children. He'd love children of his own.

 

Richard: I wonder what it's like to drown. I can swim, but for those who can't it must make drowning seem a real possibility. (Richard walks along the shoreline slowly.)  My father taught me to swim. He was that sort of man. A Desert Rat.

 

Harriet: Thomas has heart and sensibility. I'm sure he'd like children.

 

Richard: Men went mad in the desert my father said. All that sand and the heat. He was a man's man.

 

Harriet: If his wife hadn't been killed, I'm sure he'd have had children.

 

Richard: He still is to a degree, but age has wearied him. He needs help now, being older.

 

Harriet: The sea is calmer.

 

Richard: The cool breeze refreshes you.

 

Harriet: The horizon so unchanging, except for...

 

Richard: Ships. Passing ships in the night.

 

Harriet: Or day. Passing ships in the day.

 

Richard: In the night, the quotation says. In the night.

 

Harriet: In the dark. In the dark.

     

                       Curtains fall.

           

 

     End of scene Four.

 

            

 

 

 

                       

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                     Scene Five.

 

Harriet, Richard and Thomas are sitting on deckchairs later in the day. Harriet is between the two men sitting forward gazing at the sea. The men are sitting back relaxed. Thomas has his eyes closed.

 

Harriet: You can feel the cold air off the sea. I can feel it round my ankles.

 

Richard: You should have put your stockings back on earlier at the hotel. I told you the air would be colder and damper.

 

Harriet: It's the freedom I like. Most of the year I have to wear stockings and

 such; it's nice to be able to feel the air along my legs. (Harriet runs her right 

hand up and down her leg. She looks at Richard for a few moments, then turns to look at

 Thomas.)The sea air has made him tired. (Looks closer at Thomas)When men are

 asleep they seem like children. They have that helpless look. (Thomas open

his eyes)

 

Thomas: I'm not asleep, Harriet, I'm just resting my eyes.

 

Harriet: My father used to say that. I'm just resting my eyes, young Harriet,

 he'd say. Most of the time you could hear him snoring. Sounded like a ship

 leaving harbour.

 

Richard: Talking of ships, isn't that that famous liner out there. (Richard sits

 forward and points out to sea. The other two follow his finger's direction.)

 

Harriet: My mother used to moan at him. Kept her awake at night he did.

 

Thomas: It's not as large the new liner. I'm sure.

 

Richard: Looks the same to me.

 

Thomas: No, the funnels are different.

 

Harriet: Almost divorced him she did.

 

Richard: In what way are they different?

 

Thomas: More upright.

 

Harriet: She went to bed with earplugs after that. (Harriet sits back in her

deckchair and searches for a cigarette. She finds one and lights it. She holds the lighter in

her hand and stares at it for a few moments.)This lighter is his. He gave it to me

when he gave up smoking.

 

Richard: I wonder what it was like on the Titanic when she went down.

 

Thomas: Hectic, I should imagine.

 

Harriet: His breathing got so bad he had to give it up.

 

Richard: Give up what?

 

Harriet: Smoking. He had to give up smoking because his breathing was

bad.

 

Thomas: The unsinkable she was supposed to be, but she sank.

 

Richard: You should give up smoking.

 

Harriet: What sank?

 

Thomas: The Titanic.

 

Harriet: When was that?

 

Thomas: 1912.

 

Harriet: Some time ago, then?

 

Richard: Smoking is a bad habit. I can't see why people start.

 

Thomas: Yes. Sometime ago. (Pause. Thomas sits back and muses on the thought of

 being on board a sinking ship. Richard looks back at the hotels and shops for a few

minutes. Harriet stares at her cigarette, watching the smoke rise from it.)

 

Richard: Do you remember old Mr.Thompson at school? (Turns and looks

 across at Thomas.)

 

Thomas: Too well. Caned me enough times to have his name branded on my

 brain cells for all eternity.

 

Harriet: Must have been a naughty boy then, Thomas.

 

Thomas: He was a sadist. He'd cane a boy for the sheer fun of it.

 

Richard: Wonder what he's doing now?

 

Thomas: Rotting in Hell, I hope.

 

Harriet: I knew a Mr. Thompson. He used to have a boutique in the West

 End of London.

 

Thomas: Can't imagine our Thompson running a boutique, can you Richard?

 

Harriet: I think he fancied me. He would always manage to put his hands on

 me...

 

Richard: He'd have one of those...

 

Harriet: I was going to complain, but I didn't want to cause a fuss.

 

Thomas: Girly magazine shops, like they have in Soho.

 

Richard: More for the boys, I'd say.

 

Harriet: I wish my Mr. Thompson were one for the boys. (Harriet closes her

eyes. Thomas gazes out at the sea. Richard looks at Harriet.)

 

Thomas: That liner's gone now.

 

Richard: I wonder where she's going?

 

Thomas: Somewhere nice, I expect.

 

Richard: My father always promised himself a voyage, but he never did go.

 

Thomas: Don't we all make ourselves promises. As a child I promised

 myself that as soon as I left school I'd never pick up another book.

 

Richard: Promises are easy to make, but harder to keep. A little like a

 mistress: easy to make love to her, but harder to keep her happy.

 

Thomas: I wouldn't know about a mistress, I've never had one.

 

Harriet: I wonder if that boutique's still there. (Harriet opens her eyes.) Do you

 think it could be, Richard?

 

Richard: Is what still where?

 

Harriet: That boutique. That one run by my Mr.Thompson.

 

Richard: I shouldn't have thought so.

 

Thomas: I had a good wife. I had no need of a mistress. She'd still be here

 now if it wasn't for that drunk driver. They never found him. Got away with

 it. Bloody murder. (Thomas wipes his nose.) She'd have been my age now. We

 were only a few months apart in age.

 

Richard: That sea air is getting quite sharp.

 

Harriet: I wouldn't put up with that nonsense, now. Mr. Thompson or

 anyone.

 

Thomas: You can feel it on your cheeks.

 

Richard: Time to go back to the hotel for the evening meal soon.

 

Harriet: I was only young, then. Didn't want to make a fuss. Hands all over

 you as you tried on some garment.

 

Thomas: The sun's going in.

 

Richard: Getting dark.

 

Harriet: Like passing ships in the dark as Richard says.

 

Richard: Night, Harriet, it's night. Passing ships in the...

 

Harriet: Night.

 

Thomas: Calm isn't it out there. Tranquil as a lily pond.

 

Richard: The sea's getting darker.

 

Harriet: The plans of dogs and cats.

 

Richard: Mice and men, Harriet, mice and men.

 

Thomas: Passing ships have gone. Too dark to see much.

 

Richard: Best be going back.

 

Harriet: Night night, sea. (Richard sighs as he looks at Harriet. Thomas smiles in deep

 thought.) Curtain falls.

 

                                      End of Act One.. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

               ACT TWO.

 

                  Scene One.

 

The outside of the small hotel is upstage with a door leading into the hotel bar. Downstage are two tables each with three chairs placed on a veranda over looking the sea.. Thomas and Richard are sitting in two of the three chairs. There some glasses on the table and an ashtray. It is early evening of the same day.

 

Thomas: Is Harriet not joining us for a drink?

 

Richard: Yes. She’ll be down later. She had to powder her nose, so she said.

 

Thomas: My mother used to use that expression. Going to powder my nose, she’d say. And when she returned I always gaped at her nose to see if it had been powdered, but it never looked any different. It always looked a little shiny if anything. I often wondered why women used that expression. Why they couldn’t just say they were going to the toilet or the loo, I don’t know.

 

Richard: That’s women for you, Thomas. Always planting a forest to get to a tree. Can’t for the life of them say a simple word or utter a straightforward expression where a complex one will do.

 

Thomas: Does Harriet have any ambitions apart from having babies?

 

Richard: She hasn’t mentioned any to me. (Pause. Picks up a glass and sips the contents slowly. The holding the glass just away from his lips he looks out towards the sea that is still visible, though dimly.) I thought at one time that she might paint again. But nothing came of it. She seems to have lost all interest in what arts she had been interested in and now just broods on this baby idea.

 

Thomas: Did she used to paint? Was she an artist of some kind?

 

Richard: Says she was. She’s shown me the odd print of paintings she says she’s done in the past.

 

Thomas: Is she any good?

 

Richard: Hard to say in this day and age: it all looks rather odd.

 

Thomas:   I thought she might have had an artistic instinct somewhere within her yesterday when I spoke to her briefly.

 

Richard: She was only briefly a professional.

 

Thomas: Why did she give it up?

 

Richard: No one bought her paintings.

 

Thomas: Well, Van Gogh didn’t sell more than one and he didn’t give up.

 

Richard: Yes, but she doesn’t have a rich brother to keep her fed and clothed. (Sips at his glass again. Thomas picks up his glass and there is a few moments silence.)

 

Thomas: I love art. I love the artistic kind of life. The bohemian attitude towards the outer world. The freedom of expression.

 

Richard: We all love art, Thomas. We’re British. It comes with the territory. Name me a true English man who doesn’t love art.

 

Thomas: Your father hated art. He thought it was for pansies.

 

Richard: No. That’s not strictly true. He liked Constable.

 

Thomas: Constable doesn’t represent the whole of art, Richard. Your father, if |I remember correctly, said that he’d rather shake hands with a dead German than a living artist.

 

Richard: That moon is new isn’t? Or is it a full moon? I can’t decide which it is.

 

Thomas: And when you played your father that Ravel piece on the piano he said when’s the tune going to start.

 

Richard: And it is beginning to look quite romantic. I think the moon always looks romantic.

 

Thomas: And when you took him to see the Henry Moore sculptures, he was quite bemused and coughed on his pipe for laughing so much.

 

Richard: Harriet knows about the moon. She’s interested in astrology. She showed me the various stars and what they were called. She’s quite bright in her field. (Pause.) She’s often late to bed because she’s at the window peering up at the sky. I think that was a shooting star, she’ll say staring up at the night sky through the parted curtains.

 

Thomas: And your father thought Monet was a French wine. (Puts down his glass and looks back the hotel.) Is Harriet going to come down here tonight?

 

Richard: You know women and their noses. I’ve yet to meet a woman who was ever on time. Won’t be long, she said. (Peers back at the hotel for a few moments. Then both men turn and look out at the sea.)

 

Thomas: My late wife was always on time. Never late for anything. Except our wedding. Then she came late. The driver took her to the wrong church.

 

Richard: Good God. I wish my former wife had gone to the wrong church; I could have saved a hell of a lot of money on alimony fees.

 

Thomas: That moon appears to sit on the sea.

 

Richard: I’d paint that if I were an artist.

 

Thomas: The way the light spreads out.

 

Richard: Maybe |I should get Harriet to get out her oils again. I’d love to see her dab away with her brush.

 

Thomas: And the sea is shimmering.

 

Richard: She has an artistic way of lying in bed.

 

Thomas: And the greying clouds add that touch of mystery to the whole scene.

 

Richard:  Spreading her arms out like some crucified Christ.

 

Thomas: I love the moon. I love its enigma. Like a woman. (Lights fall)

 

                                     End of Scene One.

 

                                   Act Two. Scene Two.

 

Half and hour later at the same scene. Thomas and Harriet are sitting in two of the three chairs. Thomas is looking out at the sea. Harriet is fiddling about in her bag.

 

Harriet: I'm sure I've left my cigarettes back in the room. Damn and blast it. (Searches more rigorously but finds no cigarettes.) I don't suppose you have a cigarette on you do you?

 

Thomas: No. I've not been one for the weed. My brother smoked, but I never got the taste for it.

 

Harriet: Lucky you. Wish I'd never started. (Puts her handbag on the floor by her feet. Sits and stares at Thomas.) What do you think of babies?

 

Thomas: Babies?

 

Harriet: Yes, those little human beings that seem to cause men so much anxiety.

 

Thomas: I've never had any.

 

Harriet: But would you like to have done if your wife hadn't been killed?

 

Thomas: Hard to say. I expect she would have liked one or two.

 

Harriet: I want a baby.

 

Thomas: Do you?

 

Harriet: Desperately.

 

Thomas: What's Richard think?

 

Harriet: He's not keen. Frightened it will interfere with his music.

 

Thomas: That's your drink on the table. Richard said you liked your gin and tonic.

 

Harriet: I told him it needn't interfere with his music. I said I'd do the nasty jobs like nappies and such. Still not keen though.

 

Thomas: Not been much for the spirits. I prefer beer myself.

 

Harriet: Why are men so afraid of babies?

 

Thomas: My late wife liked her vodka. Drank it neat.

 

Harriet: They don't mind the sex, but they don't like the result.

 

Thomas: Not that she ever got drunk, but she liked a drink.

 

Harriet: Do you like children, Thomas?

 

Thomas: Yes. (Pause. Thomas looks at Harriet and their eyes engaged for several minutes in silence.) Liking children and having children are two different things. I like ballet, but I wouldn't want a ballerina as a wife.

 

Harriet: They are usually very thin.

 

Thomas: Get in some awkward positions.

 

Harriet:  And leaping about all over the place.

 

Thomas: My brother had no time for ballet. Said it made him laugh all those men in tights chasing girls in tights and tutus.

 

Harriet: Shame he drowned; he sounds a laugh.

 

Thomas: Who?

 

Harriet: Your brother. He sounds like he was a laugh.

 

Thomas: He never took anything serious. (Thomas is silent for a few moments. He watches Harriet walking up and down by the table.) He only took things seriously when it was too late.

 

Harriet: I like a good laugh. They say it does you good to have a good laugh.

 

Thomas: When he was brought out of the sea, he had a serious expression on his face, so I was told. (Thomas watches Harriet’s hands fiddling in her skirt pocket.) If you’re that desperate for a cigarette, why not go back to your room?

 

Harriet: Wish Richard would laugh more. He’s such a serious person.

 

Thomas: If I was desperate for a cigarette, I’d go back to my room.

 

Harriet: Go back to your room? Whatever for?

 

Thomas: No. I meant if I was desperate.

 

Harriet: Desperate for what?

 

Thomas: Cigarette.

 

Harriet: Thought you didn’t smoke.

 

Thomas: I don’t. I meant if I was you and I was desperate.

 

Harriet: Desperate for what, Thomas? (Harriet sits down and gazes at Thomas.)

 

Thomas: I thought you wanted a cigarette. I thought you were desperate for a cigarette by the way your fingers were fiddling.

 

Harriet: I am, Thomas. I’d give anything for a cigarette at this moment.

 

Thomas: Richard’s quite some time. He said it wouldn’t take a few minutes.

 

Harriet: I shouldn’t have started. I want to give up, but I’ve not got the willpower. I need a puff to calm my nerves. (Picks up her glass and sips daintily.) Did Richard tell you about my bad nerves?

 

Thomas: No. He said you were a painter.

 

Harriet: I’ve had bad nerves for years. I think it gets him down a bit. He hasn’t the patience for nervous people.

 

Thomas: I’d love to be able to paint. Always wished I could pick up a brush and dab away like a Piccaso.

 

Harriet: It’s not my fault I’ve bad nerves. My father’s to blame. He led my mother and me such a life when I was a child. He was a drunk. He used to…

 

Thomas: Mind you, Piccaso was overrated, I think. Richard thinks he was a fraud.

 

Harriet: Fraud? Who?

 

Thomas: Piccaso. Richard thought him a fraud.

 

Harriet: The man was a bloody genius. Richard’s opinion of art is quite narrow in range. We often argue over art. Him, his old stuff, the Moderns, and me.

 

 

Thomas: Your father drank you say?

 

 

Harriet: Like it was rationed. You could say he had a drinking problem: two hands and only one mouth. We dreaded him coming home. I would hide behind my mother and shake. He often used to…

 

Thomas: Richard said you knew about the moon and its phases.

 

Harriet: I was often black and blue.

 

Thomas: And the stars. He said you knew of the constellations.

 

Harriet: I think he was a weak man in retrospect.

 

Thomas: That moon has a mystery about it.

 

Harriet: He died eventually when his liver gave upon him.

 

Thomas: Shelley had a thing about the moon. I suppose most poets do.

 

Harriet: Richard’s a long time. Always takes his time. Except bedtime. (Silence settles upon them.)

             End of Scene Two.

     Act Two. Scene Three.

 

Fifteen minutes later. Same scene as before. Richard and Harriet sit on two of the three chairs. The table has more glasses and the ashtray is getting full. Harriet is fiddling in her bag.

 

Harriet: Where did Thomas go?

 

Richard: Went to look for you.

 

Harriet: Did he?

 

Richard: Didn’t you see him?

 

Harriet: No. (Harriet looks deeper in her bag. Doesn’t find what she wants so looks under the table.)

 

Richard: What are you looking for?

 

Harriet: My cigarettes. I had them in my bag I thought. (She closes her bag in frustration.) You haven’t seen them have you?

 

Richard: No. Are you sure you’ve not seen Thomas?

 

Harriet: No. At least not since dinner. (Searches through her pockets.) I must have a smoke. I shall die without a smoke.

 

Richard: You’ll die if you do smoke so what the difference?

 

Harriet: I shall die with a cigarette in between my lips.

 

Richard: I thought you wanted a baby. It’s not good to smoke if you intend having a baby.

 

Harriet: I can’t get pregnant on my own.

 

Richard: Mary Tudor was desperate for a baby.

 

Harriet: Who’s she one of your writer friends?

 

Richard: Bloody Mary.

Harriet: Not a friend then. I would do anything for a cigarette.

 

Richard: Don’t you know any history? Mary Tudor.

 

Harriet: Battle of Hastings 10 something or other. They were in my bag.

(Looks at Richard for several seconds, then searches through her pockets again.)

 

 

Richard: Desperate for an heir. Even had phantom pregnancies.

 

Harriet: Unless they’re upstairs. (Her face breaks into a smile.) Yes. Come to think of it, I think I left them in my room.

 

Richard: Didn’t do any good though because nothing appeared.

 

Harriet: Can you buy me some more? I really am desperate. I’ll go round the bend if I can’t have a drag.

 

Richard: She murdered quite a few Protestants in her reign.

 

Harriet: Rain? Do you think so? Looks fine to me. Thomas he’d buy me cigarettes if he were here. (Looks back at the hotel. Then looks at Richard.) If he were here.

 

Richard: Then her half sister Elizabeth reigned for donkey’s years and died a virgin.

 

Harriet: I was a virgin for years. (Looks out at the sea.) I might as well have stayed one for good it’s done me. I wish at times that my mother had stayed a virgin. I am desperate for cigarette, Richard.

 

Richard: Hell has no fury like a woman… (Gazes at Harriet. Pause.)

 

Harriet: Men have been the low point of my life. Do you know that, Richard? Low point.

 

Richard: I can’t imagine you being an old maid.

 

Harriet: I’m not an old maid.

 

Richard: You haven’t the feet for it.

 

Harriet: There’s nothing wrong with my feet. I only hope my baby has my feet and not yours. (Looks down at her feet, then at Richard’s.) If I ever get that far.

 

Richard: Thomas must have got lost.

 

Harriet: All I want is a baby.

 

Thomas: He was always doing that at school. Getting lost was a past time with him. (Richard smiles.) And cross country runs were his forte. Went missing for hours and came back just in time for supper.

 

Harriet: Boy or girl, I don’t mind which. As long as it’s healthy.

 

Richard: Where has Thomas got to?

 

Harriet: If Thomas were here, he’d get me some cigarettes. He’s got feelings.

 

Richard: I’d best go look for him. (Richard attempts to get up, but pauses.) You have a look for him, Harriet. He was searching for you.

 

Harriet: That moon is a full moon.

 

Richard: I thought it might be, but I wasn’t sure. I said to Thomas that you’d know.

 

Harriet: Romantic isn’t it. The moon.

 

Richard: It has an attraction that the sun lacks.

 

Harriet: The sun is gives us life, the moon gives us romance.

 

Richard: Life and romance. They seem to go together.

 

Harriet: Like a horse and marriage.

 

Richard: Carriage. It’s horse and carriage.

Harriet: What’s wrong with horse and marriage? I like horses.

 

Richard: The fact you like horses has nothing to do with the quote you gave.

 

Harriet: I do like horses and cigarettes. It’s a fact.

 

Richard: Facts have to be interpreted.

 

Harriet: Have to be what?

 

Richard: Interpreted.

 

Harriet: What’s that mean? All these big words you use.

 

Richard: Thomas will tell you he’s the writer.

 

Harriet: I like Thomas.

 

Richard: The stars are plenteous tonight. Like a carpet of twinkling diamonds.

 

Harriet: Diamonds are a girl’s…

 

Richard: Best friend.

 

Harriet: Stars and diamonds, Richard. (Harriet stands and walks forward a few paces. She looks up at the sky and then smiles.) Thomas should be here by now.

 

Richard: He was always getting lost.

 

Harriet: He’d help me if I were that desperate. (Looks back at Richard.) Cigarettes help me cope. Diamonds and stars you can keep. All I really want is…

 

Richard: The sea’s getting rough; you can see it.

 

Harriet: And hear it. The waves. Dark waves. (Pause. Silence.)

 

                                  End of Scene Three.

                                  

                                    Act Two. Scene Four.

A short time later.  The same scene setting. Thomas, Richard and Harriet are sitting around the table. Harriet in between the two men. The table is full of glasses and the ashtray is overflowing. Harriet holds a cigarette between her fingers, unlit.

 

Harriet: All I need now is a light.

 

Thomas: What an expanse of sky.

 

Richard: Mysterious.

 

Thomas: Makes you wonder what it’s all about.

 

Richard: Pascal was frightened by such an expanse.

 

Harriet: A match or lighter.

 

Thomas: Pascal?

 

Richard: That philosopher…French I think.

 

Thomas: Makes you think such a huge expanse of sky with stars so far away.

 

Harriet: Holding an unlit cigarette is like being a w***e in a eunuch’s convention. (Harriet puts the cigarette between her lips and moves her head towards Thomas.) Light? (Mumbles the sound)

 

Thomas: Where’s your lighter?

 

Richard: That thing your father gave you.

 

Harriet: (Removing cigarette holds it aloft.) Mislaid. I’m desperate.

 

Richard: Go ask the waiter in the bar.

 

Thomas: Isn’t it in your bag?

 

Harriet: Don’t talk to me about him.

 

Thomas: I’m certain you had it earlier.

 

Richard: What’s wrong with the waiter?

 

Harriet: Nothing’s wrong with the waiter.

 

Thomas: Is it in your room?

 

Richard: You said don’t talk to me about him.

 

Harriet: About whom? No, it’s not in my room.

 

Thomas: I thought I saw you with it in your room.

 

Richard: You said don’t talk to me…

 

Harriet: My father, not the waiter. The waiter’s all right. Quite nice actually.

 

Thomas: He’s Italian looking.

 

Richard: Her father Italian looking? I thought he was dead.

 

Thomas: The waiter. He’s Italian looking.

 

Harriet: My father, rot his soul, wasn’t Italian looking. He looked like a cross between Marlon Brando and Bertrand Russell depending which time of his life you knew and saw him. I unfortunately, knew too long.

 

Richard: My father was a Desert Rat.

 

Thomas: Shall I go and get you a light?

 

Harriet: My mother’s life was made hell through him.

 

Thomas: It’s no problem. I don’t mind.

 

Harriet: Mine too.

 

Richard: The sun was so hot some soldiers cook eggs on the bonnets of lorries.

 

Harriet: I need a smoke. Yes, please, Thomas. You are a lifesaver.

 

Thomas: Shall I get matches?

 

Harriet: A box. Get a box.

 

Richard: Hard to imagine cooking an egg on a bonnet. That’s what some did my father told me. Thomas gets up and goes into the bar. Harriet watches him go. Richard looks at Harriet.)

 

Richard: Where’s he gone? Something I’ve said?

 

Harriet: Matches. He’s gone to get me a light.

 

Richard: What did your father do during the war?

 

Harriet: He drank.

 

Richard: I meant in what service he served.

 

Harriet: The Royal Air Force.

 

Richard: Really. One of Churchill’s few.

 

Harriet: He was one too many as far as my mother and I were concerned.

 

Richard: Brave men, my father said. Saved Britain from Hitler’s invasion.

 

Harriet: Never saved us from my father’s invasion. (Pause. Harriet looks back at the hotel. Richard looks out at the dark seascape.)

 

Richard: How tranquil it looks. The moon just above the sea. The stars spread wide as if tossed by some invisible hand across the dark expanse.

(Pause. Richard lifts his glass and sips his drink. Harriet turns round and looks at the sky.)

 

Harriet: He’s quite kind and thoughtful.

 

Richard: Why don’t you paint again? This scene would be lovely.

 

Harriet: I’m sure he’d want a child if he had the chance.

 

Richard: Watercolour or oils. Oils would be more professional looking.

 

Harriet: Must be sad losing someone you’ve loved. He looks sad sometimes when you look at him.

 

Richard: I’ll buy you some paints if you want to start again. A hobby does you good. (Thomas returns slowly towards the table and sits passing Harriet the matches.)

 

Thomas: It was busy in there. Got talking to the waiter. He says his parents are Italian, but he was born London. Small world.

 

Harriet: You are a real lifesaver, Thomas. (Harriet light up her cigarette and takes a deep inhalation.) Lovely. Heaven. Nothing quite like it.

 

Richard: Art is the saviour of the soul.

 

Thomas: He moved down this way to be near the sea.

 

Harriet: Who?

 

Richard: Give me a painting and I am saved.

 

Thomas: The waiter. Says he feels closer to Italy by the sea.

 

Harriet: He seemed quite nice. Soft spoken.

 

Thomas: Italy is where great art is to be found.

 

Richard: Is the waiter an artist?

 

Thomas: I always wanted to go there. Never got to go there. My wife wasn’t keen on foreign cooking.

 

Harriet: Is he?

 

Richard: Is he what?

 

Harriet An artist. The waiter is he an artist?

 

Richard: How do I know, I’ve not spoken to him.

 

Harriet: I thought you said he was an artist.

 

Thomas: She was afraid of getting a stomach bug or food poisoning.

 

Richard: Ask Thomas, he’s spoken to him.

 

Harriet: Is he Thomas?

 

Thomas: Is who what?

 

Harriet: The waiter. Is he an artist?

 

Thomas: I don’t know, he never mentioned it. Said he found London too crowded.

 

Harriet: I thought he was an artist. (Pause.)

 

Richard: You can understand why Pascal found the immensity of space so frightening. It’s so vast. Look at those stars. So far away.

 

Thomas: London is crowded. Too many people.

 

Harriet: Italy is a place I’d like to visit. See all those works of art. Those statues.

 

Richard: The contrast of light and dark and brightness and dimness. You’d make a good painting of this I’m sure, Harriet.

 

Thomas: I want to go to Italy. Now that she’s gone.

 

Harriet: If I can’t have a baby, I want to go to Italy.

 

Richard: Dab dab of the old brush against canvas.

 

Thomas: Can’t bring back the dead. (Pause. All three sit in silence.)

      End of Scene Four.

 

                Act Two... Scene Five.

 

Late evening. Same scene as before. Thomas sits alone on one of the three chairs. The table is full of glasses and the ashtray is cluttered to over flowing. Thomas sits back and stares at the sky.

 

Thomas: The stars have a way of making you feel utterly insignificant. Look as hard as you might they seem endless. (He searches along the table for his glass. He sits up and moves a few glasses to one side. He finds his glass and sips from it.) If only you were here dear wife…You’d love this seascape. (Looks behind him at the hotel.) The hotel’s not bad either. The rooms are fine. (He pauses. Turns round and stares at the sky again.) Remember that time in…Where was it?

 

Harriet: Where was what? (Harriet has cigarette in her mouth hanging from one corner. She looks at Thomas then sits down in a chair next to him.)Where was what, Thomas?

 

Thomas: I was talking to my wife.

 

Harriet: I thought she was dead.

 

Thomas: She is, but I still talk to her as if she were still here.

 

Harriet: Isn’t that a sign of insanity?

 

Thomas: Who knows what’s sane and what these days isn’t.

 

Harriet: But where was what? (Removes the cigarette from her mouth and flicks it away.)

 

Thomas: Somewhere we stayed. My wife and I.

 

Harriet: Best to forget.

 

Thomas: Can’t seem to some days.

 

Harriet: He who can forget is cured…So Richard told me.

 

Thomas: Maybe I don’t want to be cured. Maybe I need the pain of remembering.

 

Harriet: That’s masochistic. Big word that Richard taught me. He's full of big words.

 

Thomas: I’m fed up with words. I see words all day when I write. What does Richard know about masochism?

 

Harriet: You don’t want to know.

 

Thomas: I thought he had enough of that at school with old Thompson.

 

Harriet: He often mentions his old teachers. Not mentioned Thompson before today though.

 

Thomas: Just as well. He was a cruel bugger.

 

Harriet: You can still smell the sea air.

 

Thomas: He’d cane boys all day if he could.

 

Harriet: It sweeps off the sea like an invisible ghost.

 

Thomas: Richard was at his mercy more than once. We all were.

 

Harriet: I feel it around my legs like a saucy sailor. (Pause. Looks at Thomas.) Where’s Richard?

 

Thomas: Richard? He’s gone for a walk.

 

Harriet: Walk at this time of night?

 

Thomas: Says it does his soul good.

 

Harriet: Then he needs to walk for a year or two.

 

Thomas: Do we have souls?

 

Harriet: Don’t get too deep with me, Thomas. I’m not born for it.

 

 

Thomas: The sea soothes me. That’s my God if any. The sound and the smell. The feel of it against my cheek. (Feels his cheek with his hand) Bliss. 

(Harriet leans towards Thomas and kisses his cheek.) What's that for?

 

Harriet: You said kiss.

 

Thomas: I said bliss, Harriet, bliss.

 

Harriet: Oh. Sorry, Thomas. Thought you said kiss.

 

Thomas: No, it's all right. No harm done. (Stares out at the moonlit sea.)

 

Harriet: I don't kiss every man I see.

 

Thomas: No. I never thought you did. I thought after what happened earlier... (Pause. Looks at Harriet with sideward glance and then looks out at the sea again.)

 

Harriet: It happens with men sometimes.

 

Thomas: That moonlight on the sea is like something Friedrich would have painted.

 

Harriet: Friedrich? Is he a friend of yours too?

 

Thomas: No. The German artist. Caspar David Friedrich.

 

Harriet: Oh, him. Yes. Yes. (Smiles to herself) I knew an artist called Caspar. David Caspar. Thought he was God's gift. (Still smiling looks at Thomas.)If he was God's gift then God's got a strange sense of humour. I've seen better-looking warts.

 

Thomas: Men can be conceited.

 

Harriet: Thought he knew it all. Thought I'd throw myself at his feet because we shared a studio for a while. (Harriet becomes silent)

 

Thomas: Women have a different sense of worth. They know themselves better. (Picks up his glass and sees that it is empty.) Would you like another drink?

 

Harriet: He had quite a few passing through the studio. His models he called them. W****s more like. He was an abstract painter. Didn't need models.

 

Thomas: You can have what you like. I'm going onto coffee.

 

Harriet: Don't know what they saw in him, ugly sod. (Pause.)Coffee?

 

Thomas: I've drunk too much to go on with it, so a coffee will do me fine.

 

Harriet: Gin? Can I have a gin?

 

Thomas: What you like. I've no problems what you have.

 

Harriet: Now you are tempting fate.

 

Thomas: Gin it is then. (Thomas rises to go, but Harriet grabs his hand.)

 

Harriet: And tonic. I must have my tonic.

 

Thomas: Your hand's cold.

 

Harriet: You know what the say don't you. Cold hands, no drawers.

 

Richard: Warm heart. (Richard stands beside Thomas. His eyes are on Harriet.) It's warm heart, Harriet. Cold hands, warm heart.

 

Thomas: Did you want a drink, Richard? (Looks uncomfortable and embarrassed.)

 

Richard: Her hands are always cold. (Looks at Thomas with a smile.) Nevertheless, her heart's warm most of the time. Rum. Double to warm me through. Chilly down there by the sea. (Thomas goes off towards the bar. Richard moves to the chair next to Harriet and sits down. He sighs deeply. Breathes in the air.)Did you miss me?

 

Harriet: I thought it was cold hands, no drawers.

 

Richard: Warm heart.

 

Harriet: What are no drawers, then?

 

Richard: Red hat, I think. Red hat, no drawers.

 

Harriet: Why red hat?

 

Richard: Just a saying. Who knows. Who cares.

 

Harriet: The woman with no drawers, she'd care. Especially on a night like this. (She lifts her handbag onto her lap and searches through it.) Red hat indeed. I'm sure it was cold hands.

 

Richard: Cold hands, red hands, red drawers, no drawers, who cares, Harriet? (Richard becomes silent. His eyes scan the seascape.)

 

Harriet: It makes sense to me having cold hands with no drawers on. (Finds cigarette packet and takes out a cigarette. Looks at packet for few moments then puts it away in her handbag. She holds the cigarette in between her fingers and turns it slowly as if she was deciding whether to smoke it or not. She decides she will, puts it in her mouth, and lights it with a match. She puts the matches away in her handbag and puts it on the floor.)Was it cold down there by the sea? You look cold.

 

Richard: Yes, it was cold, but it was a refreshing experience. Thoughts swam around my head like goldfish around a bowl. I sucked in the air as if it were a fine wine.

 

Harriet: Just as well you had drawers on.

 

Richard: You seem to have a fixation about no drawers. Does the night air do nothing for you? Doesn't it open up your mind to the thoughts of the universe?

 

Harriet: Thomas and I were talking about art.

 

Richard: Art? That is a good subject to be discussing while holding hands.

 

Harriet: I only held his hand to make him wait.

 

Richard: Wait for what?

 

Harriet: Tonic. I wanted some tonic.

 

Richard: And what did Thomas say about that?

 

Harriet: He said I could have what I liked.

 

Richard: I bet he did.

 

Harriet: At least he gets me drinks.

 

Richard: Is that all he's getting you?

 

Harriet: Gin. Gin and tonic. (Turns away from Richard and puffs deeply on her cigarette.)

 

Richard: Red hats. Cold hands. No drawers. Warm heart. (Richard sits and stares up at the sky. He sits in a shared silence with Harriet.)

   

             End of Scene Five.

 

 

 

 

 

    

 

 

 

                                  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

         Act Two. Scene Six.

 

Ten minutes later. Harriet has moved to the other table and left Richard on the other table alone. Harriet’s table is clear and the ashtray empty. Richard’s table is full of glasses and the ashtray cluttered. Richard is looking out at the seascape with a moody expression. Harriet is sitting tense and looking down at the ground.

Harriet: All men have double standards. Hypocrites. (Richard begins to hum a number of bars from Wagner’s Flying Dutchman Overture, whilst staring at the seascape.) It’s all right for men to have affairs and sleep with any young floosie that comes along, but any woman that does the same is branded a tart or loose woman. For men it’s just sowing their wild oats, but for a woman it’s a moral down turn. (She looks at Richard briefly, then turns and stares at the ground again.)  Hypocrites. Double standard flag wavers! (Thomas slowly walks down stage from the hotel bar carrying a tray with the drinks. He stands looking at the two people at different tables and wavers in between.)

 

Thomas: Ah. Drinks? (Goes to Richard’s table and gives Richard his glass.) Wagner? Flying Dutchman? (Stands by the table listening to Richard’s humming.)

 

Harriet: That’s not what I’d call him.

 

Thomas: Call whom?

 

Harriet: Him. (Gestures with a nod of her head towards Richard. Thomas looks down at Richard. Richard stops humming.)

 

Richard: Rum? Double? Good old boy.

 

Harriet: May you drown in it.

 

Thomas: Shall I sit at the other table? More room for my cup and saucer.

 

Richard: Sit where you like, Thomas. Each to their own choice. (Sips from his glass. Turns and glances at Harriet.)

 

Harriet: Drown in your bloody rum.

 

Thomas: Gin and tonic. (Goes to the other table and hands Harriet her glass, then sits down.) And coffee for me. (Silence for a few moments in which all three look in different directions.) Air’s getting cooler. (Pause.) Bar was crowded. Couldn’t get near it for ages. (Pause.) The moon’s sort of becoming misty.

Harriet: Thank you for the drink, Thomas.

 

Richard: Seems quite clear to me.

 

Harriet: You are a dear, Thomas.

 

Thomas: Thought it was clouding over a bit.

 

Harriet: Not like some, I could mention.

 

Richard: The moon is like a silver coin shining on a black velvet cloth.

 

Thomas: Hard to think men have walked on it. The moon, I mean.

 

Harriet: Men have been the low point of my life. All the way through it.

 

Richard: The stars are like diamonds twinkling on the dark cloth of God’s handkerchief.

 

Thomas: Not that I’d want to walk up there. To see it is what I love. To see the beauty of such a thing in the night’s sky.

 

Harriet: My mother warned me about men. Apart from the time when she tried to marry me off with her friend’s son. What a drip he was. Stammered like hell. (Smiles a little to herself) “W-w-w-will you go out with m-m-m-me?” he asked me one day outside our front gate. “I’d l-l-l-like to t-t-t-take you somewhere n-n-nice.”

 

Richard: If God had a handkerchief. If God exists.

 

Thomas: Yes. Life is full of ifs and buts. If I did this or that would my life have been so and so? We can all say such things. All of us. (Pause. Each one sits and sips from their drinks.)

 

Harriet: And it got quite funny at times. “Can I f-f-f-find you a cigarette?” And “Sh-sh-sh-shall I find you a l-l-light? (Pause.) I couldn’t go out with the poor sod for long. He had me in stitches. He kissed me once. It was like being kissed by a dog. (Harriet stops. She sips her drink again.)

 

Richard: When was your first sexual experience, Thomas?

Thomas: 1959. In the gym at school.

 

Richard: Not with old Cogan?

 

Thomas: No, no, not like that. More passive.

 

Richard: Sex is never passive. Sex is passion.

 

Harriet: Is that what you heard?

 

Thomas: Do you remember the young matron we had for a while?

 

Richard: Oh, yes, thin thing with breast like pimples. Not her?

 

Harriet: You aren’t one to speak from experience are you. Always what you’ve read or heard.

 

Thomas: Have you two had a falling out?

 

Richard: Ask her.

 

Harriet: Ask him.

 

Thomas: Some misunderstanding?

 

Harriet: He seems to think there was no misunderstanding. That something is going on between us. (Harriet glares at Richard.)

 

Thomas: Us? You and me? Something going on?

 

Richard: Weren’t you holding hands previously? And isn’t she all over you like chicken pox?

 

Harriet: (Singing softly) If you were the only boy in the world and I was the only girl… (Continues to sing for a few more bars, then stops) Nothing else would matter in the world today, Thomas, if you were the only boy.

 

Richard: There you are old boy. She’s at your feet.

 

 

Thomas: There’s nothing going on between us. She’s just winding you up to get you jealous. It’s the oldest trick in the book.

 

Richard: She’s the oldest trick in the book.

 

Harriet: He couldn’t hum his way out of a melody.

 

Richard: She has the looks of a retired racehorse.

 

Harriet: He’s just a weedy second-rate composer of third-rate songs.

 

Richard: I have been to bed with better books than her.

 

Harriet: I’ve read more interesting shopping lists than his ideas.

 

Thomas: I think we need to get back to basics. (All become silent. Then Richard stands and walks lower stage and stares at the moonlit sea.)

 

Richard: Can you honestly tell me, Thomas, that you and she do not have something going on between you?

 

Thomas: Not a jot. Not a link. Nothing between us.

 

Harriet: Only in your mind, Richard. Only in that dark cavern you call your mind. (Harriet stands up and walks upstage towards the hotel. Pauses. Looks back at Richard.) I’m going for a walk. Don’t wait up for me. (Walks off upper stage through  the door to the hotel bar.)

 

Thomas: Will she be all right on her own?

 

Richard: She can take care of herself. She’s got a brown belt in judo. And a sharp tongue to send any Romeo on his way with a bite out of his rump.

 

Thomas: Yes. Dare say she’ll be fine. (Thomas looks back to the hotel. Stares at it for a few moments, then looks back at Richard.)

 

Richard: Sea’s getting rough.

 

Thomas:  Yes. You can hear the waves along the shore. (Both men stare at the seascape in silence.)

                 

Richard: Women. Why do we bother with them, Thomas?

 

Thomas: Because they are essential to the future of mankind.

 

Richard: Very philosophical.

 

Thomas: But true. It is essential that we have women.

 

Richard: And men. Neither can survive without the other.

 

Thomas: Can’t live with them, can’t live without them, my father often said.

 

Richard: Wise man. (Turns round and walks back to the table Thomas is sitting at and sits next to him.) What was matron like?

 

Thomas: Gentle.

 

Richard: First time?

 

Thomas: Each time.

 

Richard: More than once?

 

Thomas: Frequently.

 

Richard: Good God. You dark horse.

 

Thomas: When was your first sexual experience?

 

Richard: Back in the mists of time. (Thinks in silence for a few moments.) At university. I was not as lucky as you were. Rough time first time.

 

Thomas: Who was it with?

 

Richard: That girl who served behind the counter in the dinning hall.

 

Thomas: Not spotty Minnie?

 

Richard: No. The other one.

 

Thomas: Oh. Her. Lardy Lillian.

 

Richard: Man’s got to start somewhere.

 

Thomas: Yes. (Pause.) She made some nice pies.

 

Richard: Her custard was a bit lumpy.

 

Thomas: Nice legs

 

Richard: Her sprouts were done to a turn.

 

Thomas: Fine figure in some places.

 

Richard: She could have eaten me alive.

 

Thomas: Was that a shooting star?

 

Richard: Don’t you start. Harriet’s always saying that. “Was that a shooting star?” she’ll say while I’m waiting in bed for her. “I don’t care if it’s Martian come to bed,” I tell her. (Both men sit and stare at the sky.)

 

Thomas: My wife wasn’t much for things like that. She’d not notice a full moon or a quarter moon. She was not romantic.

 

Richard: Women. Why do we bother.

 

Thomas: Lillian Lardycase. What an experience that must have been.

 

Richard: Don’t remind me.

 

Thomas: Wonder what she’s doing now?

 

Richard: Making lumpy custard.

 

Thomas: Taking first year students to bed.

 

Richard: Making her lovely pies. (Silence. Both men stare at the sea.) Curtain falls.

 

                                End of Act two and Scene Six.

 

                                      Act Three. Scene One.

 

The next morning on the beach. Thomas, Harriet and Richard are sitting on three deckchairs, two close together, one slightly apart in which Harriet sits. It is early morning just after their breakfast at the hotel.

Richard: A misty horizon.

 

Thomas: Can’t see the ships passing.

 

Richard: It will soon clear.

 

Thomas: Like to see the ships passing across the horizon.

 

Richard: It does add to the enjoyment though this misty start. I expect your father remembers these misty mornings at sea.

 

Thomas: He never spoke much about the War. The odd word slipped out occasionally.

 

Harriet: The breakfast was nice. I like a good breakfast on holiday.

 

Richard: War is what separates the men from the boys, my father often said.

 

Thomas: Many a day he’d start to say something, then he’d clamp up and become silent. I think the War troubled him. He had terrible nightmares my mother told me.

 

Harriet: The toast was scrumptious. I like the toast done nicely.

 

Richard: “Do them a power of good the lads these days, to be in uniform,” he said.

 

Thomas: We just missed being called up. Good job too.

 

Richard: I’d opt for the navy if I had been called up.

 

Harriet: That sea looks ghostly. I almost expect a ghostly galleon to sail out of the fog.

 

Richard: It’s sea mist, not fog.

 

Harriet: Full of pirates. One of those ships you see in films with Errol Flynn.

 

Thomas: I would not have liked the military life. Too restricted.

 

Richard: You’re too romantic, Harriet. It’s just a sea mist.

 

Harriet: Just my imagination working overtime. I can see myself painting it though. If I was up to painting again. Which I’m not. I have other things on my mind at the moment.

 

Thomas: I can’t bear being restricted. Life like art should be free of restrictions.

 

Richard: What things?

 

Harriet: What?

 

Thomas: Art and life should be free of unnecessary limitations.

 

Richard: What things, Harriet?

 

Harriet: Yes. You are right, Thomas, they should be.

 

Richard: Should be what?

 

Thomas: Art and life free of…

 

Harriet: Limitations. No restricted areas. No no-go areas concerning art and life.

 

Richard: What things are you talking about?

 

Harriet: Art and life.

 

Thomas: It should be like an open horizon.

 

Richard: What have you two being eating on your toast? I can’t make head or tail of what you’re on about.

 

Harriet: Richard seems to be at cross-purposes as usual.

 

Richard: You said to me that you have other things on your mind. What things?

 

Harriet: You know. (Pause.) Don’t pretend you don’t know. (Lifts her handbag up from beside her deckchair and places it on her lap. She searches through it)

 

Richard: If I knew, I wouldn’t ask. Why do women assume you can mind read. My mother was the same. She’d say things like that. My father would get quite humpty dumpty about it. “I can’t mind read woman,” he’d say to her.

 

Thomas: I think women are quite intuitive.

 

Richard: Quite what, Thomas?

 

Thomas: Intuitive. Perceptive. Instinctive.

 

Richard: Sounds like a shopping list. Women lack a sense of logic. They have never had it. That is why there have never been great women philosophers.

 

Harriet: You know what I mean. (Withdraws her cigarette packet and lighter.) You pretend behind this jargon that you don’t, but you do. (Takes out a cigarette and puts it between her lips. She puts the cigarette packet back in her handbag and then after a few seconds staring at Richard, she lights the cigarette.)

 

Thomas: But logic is not the be all and end all of life, Richard. Life is not restricted by what is logical and reasonable. Life is at times illogical and unreasonable.

 

Harriet: (Talks with a cigarette in between her lips, so words are slightly muffled.)I want a baby. Is that plain and simple for you? I don’t give a fig how I get one, but I want one. I don’t give a monkey’s what-you-call-it, I want a baby and soon.

 

Thomas: Is war reasonable? Is it logical to go to war and kill thousands of people?

 

Richard: Harriet you are too highly strung to be a good mother. You haven’t the nerve for it.

 

Thomas: I think that’s a tanker coming through the mist. You can barely see it.

 

Richard: Yes. A tanker. I’d not like to steer a ship in this mist.

 

Harriet: You talk such fiddle-sticks. I want a baby and will do whatever I have to do to get one. Even if it means… (Pause. Takes cigarette out and holds it between her fingers. She looks at it for a few seconds and then at Thomas.) Babies are what women are made for. What they are equipped for.

 

Richard: It’s a talent, steering ships. I’d not want such a responsibility.

 

Thomas: No ghostly galleon, though, Harriet.

 

Richard: No pirates.

 

Thomas: No treasure hidden in the hold. (Pause. Both men are silent. Each one musing on their thoughts of ghostly galleons and pirates.)

 

Harriet: No treasure. (Takes a quick drag on cigarette.)No ghostly galleon. (Pause.) No pirates…Except you, Richard, except you. (All three sit and look out at the sea mist in silence.)

 

                      End of Scene One.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

  Act Three. Scene Two.

 

A short time later. Thomas and Richard are sitting on two of the three deckchairs. Thomas is sitting back gazing at the sun. Richard is leaning forward staring at the sea.

Richard: Hope she comes back in a better mood.

 

Thomas: The sky is clearing. The sun is warming up.

 

Richard: She didn’t return last night until God knows what hour.

 

Thomas: A fine day is promised in those clouds.

 

Richard: A face like a tortured soul when she did came back.

 

Thomas: You can feel the warmth gradually being unleashed. It’s so rewarding waiting for the warmth to unfold.

 

Richard:  I’m sure women have demons. Ought to bring back witch-hunts. (Pause.) I can’t focus when she’s in one of her moods. (Turns and looks at Thomas.) You’d be wise to have nothing to do with her, Thomas. She’s poison to some men.

 

Thomas: I remember as a child lying under a tree and watching the sun slowly unfold itself from behind a cloud and feel the warmth search for me below and almost embrace me in its invisible arms. (Pause. Smiles to himself.) My aunt had a kitten, which I adored. I would hold it up to the sun so that it could feel the warmth also. Strange how near that memory seems.

 

Richard: Had her back to me most of the night. Like sleeping with a corpse. (Turns and looks back at the sea.) That sun is warming up. Should have put on my trunks and bathed. Not that she’d appreciate that. She hates the water. Has a fear of water so she says. Strange notions she has. (Sits back and stretches his legs out in front of him.) The clouds are clearing. The blue sky is promising.

 

Thomas: Fear of water, fear of drowning. Perhaps she drowned in a previous life.

 

Richard: You don’t believe in all that nonsense do you?

 

Thomas: Many religions have some form of reincarnation or a renewal of some sort. It must be comforting to believe in that sort of thing.

 

Richard: A crutch that’s all religions are. Something to lean on through life’s up and downs. My father said there was no God in the desert when men died. No God there when men suffered. (He goes silent for a few moments.)

 

Thomas: Maybe God suffers too. Maybe that’s what all this suffering is about: sharing in God’s suffering and pain.

 

Richard: More nonsense. What book of theology did you pick that gem from? (Looks at Thomas.) Your brain is softening. You need to see through my eyes to appreciate what life’s like. No God suffers in my world, only people.

 

Thomas: Where did Harriet go?

 

Richard: People suffer day in day out. (Looks at Thomas more intently.) Belsen, Hiroshima. The Western Front. Where was your God then?

 

Thomas: She didn’t seem too happy I must admit.

 

Richard: Went off for a walk to the pier.

 

Thomas: She wants a baby badly. It’s eating into her soul.

 

Richard: Wanted to see that fortune-teller again. Strange ideas she has. This is the real world I told her, accept what there is. (Pause.)

 

Thomas: Funny things babies. Never had one, but strangely they interest me. Like an unwrapped present. Full of expectations. Gradually unfolding what they are and will be. Hard to believe we were all babies once. Dependant on others for our very survival. Dependency becomes a dirty word as you grow older, but we all needed it at some point in our lives.

 

Richard: The seagulls are comforting. Always there. Just like old friends.

(Stares up at the sky.) The sound of seagulls always brings back my childhood. Like the taste of porridge always reminds me of school. Association of ideas and memory. Like Proust and his…She’ll be back in a better mood I hope. (Points up at the sky.) Look at them. Like vultures. I love them none-the-less. Seagulls are my gods of memory.

 

Thomas: There’s nothing going on between Harriet and me. She just needs patience and understanding at the moment. She feels a little vulnerable. Needs someone to listen. (Pause.) She merely took hold of my hand in a gesture. Nothing more. Nothing more to be said.

 

Richard: The sea is calm.

 

Thomas: The tide’s out.

 

Richard: Wish she were calm. Nothing like the sea. The sea can absorb so much. She absorbs little of any worth. Look how far it stretches. A complete horizon of water. People have drowned in vast numbers over the centuries.

 

Thomas: The Thames was a favourite for drowning. Many a maidservant has jumped in there to escape her misery. The sea also has claimed many.

 

Richard: Shelley being one of the most famous.

 

Thomas: Sad that.

 

Richard: Like losing a best friend.

 

Thomas: Or a brother. (Pause. Looks at the sea.)

 

Richard: I was an only child. Never had a brother or a sister. What you’ve never had you never miss. You however have lost…I hope she returns soon.

 

Thomas: Fool he was. Drunken fool. (Pause.)She’ll be back soon. Like some goddess from the depths.

 

Richard: The tides out.

 

Thomas: The sea is calm. (Both men sit in silence watching the far off tide.)

 

        End of Scene two.

 

 

 

 

 

                                    Act Three. Scene Three.

 

An hour later. Richard and Harriet are sitting on two of the three deckchairs. There is one deckchair empty between them. Harriet is leaning forward her hands joined together as if she were praying. Richard is sitting back with his legs stretched out in front of him.)

 

Harriet: That fortune-teller could no more read my palm than find her own backside with her eyes shut. (Pause.) Cross my palm with silver, she says. It’s all in the stars. Fraud she was. No more gypsy than I’m a virgin. (Looks at Richard.) Where’s Thomas?

 

Richard: Gone to look for a bookshop. Wants to see if they’ve got his latest book in stock, no doubt. The man’s changed. He’s almost a woman now.

 

Harriet: He could do worse.

 

Richard: He had the talent to be a great writer. He should have stuck with it and not given in to the market place.

 

Harriet: You’re well paid by the market place. You’re no Schubert yourself.

 

Richard: I keep you dressed and fed.

 

Harriet: Would you rather I was naked and starved?

 

Richard: Naked I don’t mind, but starved no. (Pause.)I used to have an aunt who could eat the backside off a donkey and still be as skinny as Gandhi’s leg. She used to wear this red woollen hat and wrinkly stockings and moan like the wind, but boy could she eat.

 

Harriet: You’d have me starved.

 

Richard: She was so thin she looked liked a Swan Vesta match with legs.

 

Harriet: Thomas understands me. He’s got feelings.

 

Richard: South End is where she’d take me. She loved the place. She was an old maid. (Pause. Smiles to himself.) My mother said my aunt lost her intended in the War. Never came back from a bombing operation.

 

Harriet: Thomas would never have let me down. (Searches through her bag. Picks out her cigarettes and lighter. Puts a cigarette in her mouth and lights it. Replaces the cigarette packet and lighter back in her bag.)

 

Richard: She could smoke like a trooper too. Had a cigarette in her mouth like an appendage. You shouldn’t smoke, Harriet. It will be the death of you.

 

Harriet: You’ll be the death of me. (Inhales deeply and then lets the smoke ease out slowly.) I should have been a nun. Why I wasted my time with men I don’t know.

 

Richard: You a nun? What a waste that would have been.

 

Harriet: I am a waste.

 

Richard: You’re depressed. You need to clear your head of miserable thoughts.

 

Harriet: I’ve never had a descent man. They’ve all been selfish and sex mad. I should have been a nun like my cousin.

 

Richard: Depression deprives one of one’s true self.

 

Harriet: She spends a good part of her life on her knees. I’ve spent a good part of my life on my back and nothing to show for it. She said she wanted to give all to God. I’d give God whatever He wanted if I could just have a baby.

 

Richard: Thomas lost his true self by writing such romantic nonsense. Real art does not sell itself on the market place. (Pause.) Where’d you get to last night? It was late when you climbed into bed.

 

Harriet: I was moon gazing.

 

Richard: And you were like an ice block. As frigid as a nun in a bishop’s bed.

 

Harriet: The moon was clear and enchanting.

 

 

Richard: You had your back to me all night. You might as well have slept in Thomas’s bed. (Pause.) Perhaps you did. Did you? Did you sleep with that writer of woman’s tripe?

 

Harriet: I couldn’t believe men had walked on the moon. It seemed a sacrilege. Like the moon had been raped. Whatever man has touched as been marred.

 

Richard: Silence only makes me think you did.

 

Harriet: Did what?

 

Richard: Sleep with Thomas.

 

Harriet: You or me?

 

Richard: Did you sleep with Thomas?

 

Harriet: Did you? At school. In that dormitory of yours?

 

Richard: Now you’re being distasteful.

 

Harriet: And you are not?

 

Richard: Straightforward question.

 

Harriet: I’ve not slept with anybody since I’ve been with you. More’s the pity.

 

Richard: Pity, yes, for the blighter whom it might have been. (Pause. Stares out at the sea.) There’s a fine specimen of a ship. Look at those sails. See how the wind fills them.

 

Harriet: And if I had been with Thomas it wouldn’t have been sleeping, I’d be doing. (Closes her eyes. Holds the cigarette in her fingers, and then throws it away.)

 

Richard: I love sailing ships. There’s something about a sailing ship that has me in raptures. Almost has if I have some memory of sailing in one centuries ago. The sea. What a place to be. (Silence.)

             End of Scene Three.

                                      Act Three. Scene Four.

 

After lunch. On the beach, Harriet and Thomas are sitting on two of the three deckchairs. They are sitting next to each other. Harriet’s handbag is on her lap. She is searching through it.

Thomas: Lovely lunch. Feel full and satisfied.

 

Harriet: Richard will stay in the bar now for hours talking to that second-rate opera singer. He’s got no sense of value. He’ll talk and talk and talk.

 

Thomas: The sea shall be my comforter now. I’ll rest in her arms. In her waves. (Smiles to himself.) When I was a boy, I’d sit and throw pebbles at the waves. It was my real joy to see them lost beneath the oncoming waves as if they were drowned sailors. (Pause.) My brother too would throw pebbles. He had a better throw than I. More strength in his arms, I suppose. Not so much strength in his brain though. He never quite made the grade for university. Was too happy to waste time with girls and drink. His downfall. His life in miniature. Wasted.

 

Harriet: He could always talk the hind leg off a horse.

 

Thomas: Donkey. Donkey, Harriet.

 

Harriet: Where?

 

Thomas: No, its talk the hind leg off a donkey, not horse.

 

Harriet: Does it matter? Does it matter if it’s a horse or donkey? Maybe the horse or donkey might mind if it’s hind leg is talked off. But to me it doesn’t matter at all. You sounded like Richard, then. Don’t become like him. Your one saving quality is that you’re not like him.

 

Thomas: Only one saving quality, Harriet? Then I am doomed. Never more to lift my head to the skies. (Smiles at Harriet. She pulls out her cigarette packet and withdraws a cigarette. Finds her lighter and lights the cigarette. Puts the lighter and cigarette packet in her bag. Then puts her bag on the ground by her deckchair.) Richard can talk when he wants to. He has the ability to talk utter piffle too.

 

Harriet: He’s an expert on talking piffle. He has a degree in piffle talking.

 

Thomas: First class degree.

Harriet: Working towards his doctorate in piffle talking. (Silence. Each looks at the other. They look out at the sea.)

 

Thomas: When my wife was killed, I didn’t want to live without her. I thought seriously about suicide.

 

Harriet: He was born talking I think. His mother must have wanted to push him back up where he came from and pushed him out the other end over the loo.

 

Thomas: I don’t know what made me change my mind. (Pause.) If I thought that I’d see her in another life, I would have had some kind of comfort, but I didn’t believe any of that religious stuff. Bleak isn’t it?

 

Harriet: Is it? It looks quite clear to me. The skies are cornflower blue.

 

Thomas: No, our outlook in life, I meant.

 

Harriet: You are a sad bugger at times, Thomas.

 

Thomas: Life’s made me that way.

 

Harriet: What a sad bugger.

 

Thomas: No. Solemn. Doom-laden with misery.

 

Harriet: What utter nonsense. You are full of life and want it badly not to end. (Takes a deep intake from the cigarette.) We are made that way. You and I, Thomas are life’s optimists.

 

Thomas: Are we?

 

Harriet: Yes. We see half-full glasses not half-empty ones. We will cling to life in the dear hope that it will improve the day after tomorrow. And if it doesn’t we’ll blame the world for a day or two then go back hoping and thinking it will eventually improve.

 

Thomas: Is that the sailing ship Richard was talking about over lunch? It’s fine specimen of a ship.

 

Harriet: I even hope against hope that I’ll get pregnant and have a baby I yearn for, even though nothing has happened or likely to happen with Richard the way he is, and me not sure if I’m capable of having babies at all. (Pause.) I’ll be done for if I don’t.

 

Thomas: I remember seeing this fine sailing ship from the boarding house window through my cousin’s telescope years ago. It was a splendid sight. So real and big and so near through the telescope. I wanted to reach out my hand and touch it.

 

Harriet: Would you want a baby?

 

Thomas: Baby? Me?

 

Harriet: Not you personally, but if you were married again?

 

Thomas: God knows. Deep thought that.

 

Harriet: Deep feelings too.

 

Thomas: Depended if the woman I was with and married to wanted a baby. I can’t say more than that.

 

Harriet: I want a baby, Thomas. (Throws a way her cigarette. Looks at Thomas with a pleading gaze.) I need a baby. A baby is now my only ambition. All that I want.

 

Thomas: I don’t think I’d find a woman like my late wife. One in a thousand she was.

 

Harriet: We are all one in a thousand to somebody if we’re lucky.

 

Thomas: She was no sex goddess, but she was all that I wanted.

 

Harriet: What now then, Thomas? A sexless life?

 

Thomas: I see no point in sex if you don’t love the person you’re to have sex with.

 

 

Harriet: If we only had sex with people we loved, the human race would have died out centuries ago.

 

Thomas: Perhaps it should have done.

 

Harriet: What did you have for lunch to make you so grumpy and dismal?

 

Thomas: It could have been the lamb cutlets.

 

Harriet: More likely the treacle pudding. (Puts her hand on Thomas’s thigh.)

 

Thomas: Or the custard. (Pause. Looks at Harriet’s hand on his thigh.) Or the parsnips.

 

Harriet: You could save my life.

 

Thomas: You could end mine if Richard saw us now.

 

Harriet: Sod Richard.

 

Thomas: Never been tempted. Not even at school.

 

Harriet: Poor you.

 

Thomas: We adored matron.

 

Harriet: I bet you did.

 

Thomas: She was a dim light in a dark world of childhood.

 

Harriet: My father was a black spot in a dim childhood.

 

Thomas: Your hand is burning my flesh. (Lifts Harriet’s hand off his thigh. Harriet sighs and peers out at the seascape.) Best not to push our luck.

 

Harriet: I hope his sailing ship sinks. I hope his teeth fall out as he speaks to that second-rate opera singer if she is an opera singer. She’s probably some tart who sings at the end of the pier. (Thomas nods. Both sit in silence looking at the sea.)

  End of Scene Four.

 

                                     Act Three. Scene Five.

 

Early evening, after dinner. Outside the hotel as the previous evening. Two tables. Three chairs around each table. Thomas, Harriet and Richard are sitting around the right hand table. There are three glasses and an ashtray on the table.

 

Richard: She is not fair to outward view as many maidens be. (Sighs.) In fact, she was quite ugly.

 

Harriet: Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. Wouldn’t she let you hold her? Is that why you say she’s ugly.

 

Thomas: Coleridge wasn’t it?

 

Richard: No one can help being ugly but she wallowed in the glory of it.

 

Harriet: You men have a one-track mind. Always to one end. Always to one objective.

 

Richard: She could undoubtedly sing her Mozart. That was obviously by the size of her bosom. However, one seeks more in a singer.

 

Thomas: Or was it Shelley?

 

Harriet: The day I meet a man who’s pure minded is the day I give up smoking. (Searches in her handbag for her cigarettes and lighter.) Or sex.

 

Richard: One wants a singer to have personality too. It’s essential. Otherwise, all you have is a voice on legs.

 

Thomas: I love Shelley. Love the flow of his verse.

 

Harriet: You and your Shelley. (Lights her cigarette with the lighter. Puts the lighter back in her handbag.) I don’t hold with all this schoolboys together in dormitory nonsense. Makes you all a lot of…Winds blown out my light.

 

Thomas: It had it good points.

 

Richard: And bad points too.

 

Harriet: Bloody wind. (Relights her cigarette.) Good points or bad points it isn’t normal. Mixed schools that is normal.

 

Thomas: Too risky.

 

Richard: Would have been nice though.

 

Harriet: To you no doubt it would.

 

Thomas: We weren’t ready for it then. Too revolutionary.

 

Harriet: Up the revolution. (Inhales deeply.) Down with stagnant minds.

 

Richard: Remember young Squires?

 

Thomas: Oh, him. Yes. No one was safe with him about. Backs to the walls boys.

 

Richard: If it had been left to him, there would have been no virgin soldiers.

 

Harriet: I rest my case.

 

Thomas: Of all the girls that are so smart…

 

Richard: There’s none like pretty Sally.

 

Harriet: My father had a sister called Sally. Aunt Sally. She was so unlike her brother.

 

Thomas: So she need be.

 

Richard: Sally, Sally, Sally in the… (Pause.)Stars. Look at them. Unfolding as the evening unwinds.

 

Thomas: My aunt Jessie dressed as a man. She walked like a man.

 

Harriet: She was a real lady she was. Not a rude word left her lips. Not a filthy thought entered her mind.

 

Richard: It makes you wonder of one’s place in the scheme of things.  

Thomas: By day, she was Aunt Jessie, but by night, she was Gordon and spent most of evenings chatting up women in the Dog and Bull.

 

Harriet: Shame they never met my aunt and your aunt.

 

Thomas: Could have been interesting.

 

Richard: I love the night. It makes you think. Makes you come down to earth and realise your place in the scheme of things.

 

Harriet: She never married, my aunt. Lived with another lady in Mayfair.

 

Thomas: Sad life.

 

Richard: Now the last of many days… (Picks up his glass and drains it.)Shelley.

 

Harriet: Shame he didn’t drown before writing poetry.

 

Thomas: Who?

 

Harriet: Shelley.

 

Richard: She’s jealous of our love for him.

 

Harriet: Jealous my father’s jockstrap. I just think it sad when two grown men spend their time reciting poems all the time.

 

Thomas: Shelley’s a god to us mere mortals.

 

Richard: One to whom we fall down and worship.

 

Harriet: Dog’s behind and cat’s poo. You’re…

 

Richard: Another drink?

 

Thomas: Small whisky. No water.

 

Harriet: Gin and tonic, Richard, dear. (Richard rises and goes towards the bar. The other two gaze at the sea.)

          End of Scene Five.

      Act Three. Scene Six.

 

An hour later. Outside the hotel. Thomas and Richard are at one table. Harriet has moved to the other table. The men’s table has many glasses and a full ashtray. Harriet’s table has one glass and an empty ashtray. She sits with her back to the men.

 

Richard: I must go down to the sea again.

 

Thomas: To the lonely sea and the sky. (Smiles.) The sea and sky meet like lovers in the night. Look at the horizon.

 

Richard: And all I ask is a tall ship… (Pause. Sits back and stars up at the evening sky.) My father said that the night sky in the desert was one of the few wonder sights they had. Usually the dead bodies and sand were all they really saw much of and that was no great wonder after a while. (Pause. Looks at Harriet. She looks at the sea.)When was your first sexual experience, Harriet?

(She turns and stares at Richard, and then she searches in her handbag for her cigarettes and lighter, but doesn’t answer.) Is it so long ago you can’t remember?

 

Thomas: One shouldn’t ask women their age or that sort of question, Richard, old chap. It’s not the done thing. Might offend the said woman.

 

Harriet: Why should it interest you, Richard? You knew I was used goods long before you and I was an item. (Finds her cigarettes and lighter. Takes out a cigarette and lights it. Then puts lighter and cigarette packet away in her handbag.)

 

Thomas: My mother was very easily offended. (Pause.) I remember once when my parents were in a queue out side a theatre the man in front passed wind. My father being an honourable man said to the man “How dare you pass wind in front of my wife.” And the man replied, “Sorry mate, I didn’t know it was her turn.”(There is a tipsy laughter from both men, but Harriet sits stony-faced.)

 

Richard: Come on, Harriet, you’re like an undertaker at his own funeral. When was your first time with a man? Or was it with a woman? (Richard stares at Harriet.) Can’t be that damned hard to remember.

 

Harriet: What’s it to you?

 

Richard: Interest. Want to know who my previous comrades were.

 

Harriet: How childish.

Thomas: All I ask is a tall ship…

 

Richard: What’s the secret? What’s the bloody mystery?

 

Harriet: Leave it, Richard. Think of something else. Think of your first time or your last time.

 

Thomas: And a star to steer her by. (Pause.) To steer her by. Fine words. Lovely way of putting one’s love of ship and sea.

 

Richard: Harriet’s past is like an onion, you peel of one layer and another is there just as green and smelly as the one before. (Stops and looks at Thomas.) And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song…That’s a poem that is.

 

Thomas: One of my favourites.

 

Richard: One to remember when by the sea.

 

Thomas: And at night. (Looks at Harriet and attempts a smile.) poetry, Harriet. One must have one’s poetry.

 

Richard: And when was this first love of yours, Harriet, old dear?

 

Harriet My past is no murkier than yours is. (Looks at Richard. Her eyes are fixed on his features.) Except…Except…

 

Thomas: Except hers is a woman’s past and yours is a man’s.

 

Harriet: Except (Her voice becomes louder.) Except I was raped at fifteen.

 

Thomas:  Raped?

 

Richard: Fifteen?

 

Harriet: By a friend of my father’s. (Draws on her cigarette hard and releases a slow flow of smoke.) If such a person can be a friend of anybody’s.

 

Thomas: Did you report it?

                      

Richard: Are you serious? Is this for real?

 

Harriet: Do you think I’d make this up? Do you really think I’d want this to be a memory?

 

Thomas: I would hope you reported it.

 

Richard: And you never told me before?

 

Harriet: What an opening for a relationship. Oh, by the way I was raped when I was fifteen is that all right? Dinner at eight?

 

Thomas: Too much of it goes unreported. They get away with it.

 

Richard: You could have mentioned it before now.

 

Harriet: When? On our second date together? Or on our fourth? When Richard should, I have brought it up?

 

Thomas: Too much of it. What the times are coming to I’ve no idea.

 

Richard: There’s always a time and place for these things. (Pause. The three are silent for a period. Harriet smokes her cigarette until it is finished and the throws it away. The men sip their drinks staring at the darkening sea and sky.)

 

Thomas: She dwelt among the untrodden ways.

 

Richard: Wordsworth. Lucy who trod the untrodden way.

 

Harriet: My mother blamed my father. I blamed myself. My father blamed me. That’s one thing we had in common. Not much but at least we had that.

 

Thomas: I learnt to love poetry at the feet of matron.

 

Richard: That wasn’t all you learnt, I bet.

 

Harriet: His friend, yet I was to blame for being a fifteen-year-old female with legs which his friend lusted after.

 

 

Thomas: Her flat was warm and inviting. Many boys sat there in the evenings in winter. Ears listening to her read. Eyes on her face.

 

Richard: Hands on their…She was an oasis in a desert of boys.

 

Harriet: My father, curse his soul, never said a word to his friend about it. Old boy’s network. Old boys together kind of thing.

 

Thomas: And that perfume she wore.

 

Richard: Soaked in more like. Like a walking brothel.

 

Harriet: Men have always been the low point of my life.

 

Thomas: Even now, I can smell it in my mind.

 

Richard: My father avoided the brothels. He said more men got the clap during the War than Lily Langtry got from her audience in her a heyday.

 

Harriet: Should have been a nun.

 

Thomas: I smelt it once on a tube train. I looked around thinking matron was on the train, but it was some young girl close by with a face like a smacked backside.

 

Richard: Time for another drink?

 

Thomas: Whiskey for me.

 

Harriet: Should have spent my life on my knees like my cousin. (Looks at Richard.)The usual. Large. Bloody large.

 

Thomas: The moon has a glow, Harriet.

 

Richard: Unlike Harriet. (He moves off towards the bar.)

 

Harriet: The sea’s rough. So am I. (Pause. Both look at the seascape. Silence.)

 

      End of Scene Six.

 

                                     Act Three. Scene Seven.

 

Half an hour later. All are sitting at the one table. Harriet is smoking. Thomas is sitting in a reclined position as if half asleep.)

 

Richard: Whenas in silks my Julia goes.

 

Thomas: Then, then methinks…

 

Richard: How sweetly flows…

 

Harriet: That matron of yours must have swallowed a library of poetry books. Bet she was after more than your ears.

 

Thomas: Matron was our queen.

 

Richard: Our soother of woes.

 

Thomas: Our mother and sister.

 

Richard: Our best friend in time of need.

 

Harriet: Men. (Sighs deeply.)I was raped and you two talk as if it was of no consequence. Soon to be forgotten. Not to be mentioned any more.

 

Thomas: Never had a sister.

 

Richard: Liked to have had a sister.

 

Thomas: Soother of wounds and woes.

 

Richard: My father was my hero. Desert Rat. First class hero. (Sits brooding.)

 

Thomas: Why didn’t I have a sister? A brother only goes and drowns himself. A sister would not have done such a thing. A sister would have been my help and friend. (Sits and broods.)

 

 

 

 

Harriet: Father said not to report it. Blamed me, but I was not to report his friend. Fifteen I was. 1963 it was. (Pause. Inhales deeply. Looks at the sky.) Water under the bridge now. He’s dead. Cancer five years ago. Father’s gone. Good riddance to them both. (Sits and looks down at the seascape lit up by the moon and stars.)If I could have my life over again I’d come back as a man. I’d not have to worry then about how or whom I had sex with. I could be who or what I wanted and not feel a second-class person. (Pauses. Closes her eyes.)However, I still want a baby. Want to feel it in my arms alive and warm. Want to hear its cry and see its little fingers. Its little wriggling toes.

(Opens her eyes.) Its tiny heart going boom boom boom against my breast. Its weenie eyes staring at me. Its little mouth closing and opening like a tiny fish out of water. (Silence.)

 

Thomas: No sister. A wife who’s dead and a brother who drowns himself. If only we say. If only. My mother should have had a girl. My mother should have drowned my brother at birth and saved him the trouble. I should have not married. Should have stayed single and had mistresses. Lots of them. All sorts. All colours shapes and sizes. Big ones small ones some as big as your… (Silence.)

 

Richard: My father said a war sorts the men from the boys. What am I a man or  a boy? No war for me. No blood and guts to wade through. No desert to fight and die in. He never understood my love of music. Thought opera was for highbrows and toffs. (Smiles.) Old now the Desert Rat. Not as nimble on his pins as he says. He was a man’s man. He was my father. He was my man.

 

Thomas: The sea’s rough.

 

Harriet: The tide’s in.

 

Thomas: And a quiet sleep and a sweet dream.

 

Harriet: The moon is my love.

 

Richard: When the long trick’s over. (Richard closes his eyes. Thomas stares at the sea. Harriet looks up at the sky. Silence.)

                    

       End of Act Three and Scene Seven.