*****
Opening
Anne enters briskly, looks behind, and calls to an unseen companion.
ANNE Come on!
BETH (Off) Give me a chance! I don't spend all the year tramping the mountains like you.
ANNE Call that a mountain? Barely a molehill. But you can take a rest here.
BETH (Entering wearily and finding a place to sit) Phew! Thank goodness!
ANNE There! How's that for a view?
BETH Let me get my breath back before I start admiring the scenery.
ANNE You really ought to take more exercise. Get yourself into condition.
BETH Don't you start. I hear enough of it from Dad.
ANNE Not enough to get you out of the armchair, by the sound of it. The trouble is, you don't appreciate the countryside.
BETH You've seen where I live. Not much countryside there.
ANNE But you're not a million miles from it.
BETH Look, by the time I've got in and finished the chores, there isn't much time for joyrides, let alone serious excursions. If I have half an hour to flop in front of the telly, that's all there is. Now can we change the subject, please?
ANNE All right. Just take a look around. It's a place I love to come to on a fine evening. There's something particular about the light at that time of day - especially when the sun breaks through after a storm.
BETH Now don't wish that on us. (Startled) Good lord!
ANNE What's the matter? You look as though you'd seen a ghost. You'd better stretch out for a while.
BETH Don't fuss. I'll be quite all right in a minute or two.
ANNE Whatever is it?
BETH Just a bit of shock. Something about that valley really hit me.
ANNE What are you talking about?
BETH You didn't bring me here last year, did you?
ANNE No. I was going to, but you had to rush off when your mother was taken ill.
BETH But I had an extraordinary feeling of knowing the place, and being somehow threatened by it.
ANNE Well, I can't see anything in the least threatening about it.
BETH (Pointing) That building over there backing on to the hillside – isn't it an inn?
ANNE Yes, as it happens. What of it?
BETH The Travellers' Rest?
ANNE Yes.
BETH Well, there you are, then.
ANNE It's a common enough name - doesn't necessarily signify anything.
BETH Have you been inside?
ANNE Yes, a few times. My grandparents had their ruby wedding party there not so long ago.
BETH As you go in, is the reception desk on the left?
ANNE Yes, but again, there's nothing special about that.
BETH And on the right, a fireplace with a copper hood?
ANNE (Beginning to show interest) Actually I think there is.
BETH And on the mantel a model of a square-rigged ship, about fifteen inches long?
ANNE Er …
BETH And then a corridor through to the back of the building, with an unmarked door at the end, and the dining room and what not off to the right? And that door opening on to a flight of stairs?
ANNE I don't know about the stairs. But you certainly turn right into the public rooms.
BETH I seem to remember that the stairs led to a tunnel into the hill.
ANNE Remember? You mean you've been there some time?
BETH It seems so. But I can't think how or when it could have been.
ANNE Well, if you knew about the tunnel, your uneasiness might have been just a touch of claustrophobia.
BETH I don't get that. And in any case, if you didn't bring me here, how could I have known about it?
ANNE Description in a travel book?
BETH Not very likely. I'd never heard of this area before I met you. And the memory's visual.
ANNE Then you must have dreamed it.
BETH Do you know, I think that may be it.
ANNE Oh?
BETH Yes. Remember the end of last year, when I'd been ill and was so worried about the exams?
ANNE I'm not likely to forget it. You were getting so depressed you had me really worried. And that was when Freda started talking about suicide.
BETH Just talk – and people who talk about it never do it, or so Dad says.
ANNE She didn't come back the next term.
BETH No, but that was because during the vacation she met some chap rich enough and daft enough to support her in the manner she fancied becoming accustomed to, and she didn't see any point in finishing the course.
ANNE Silly girl!
BETH So I told her, but it didn't do any good. She was always a featherbrain.
ANNE Let's hope her boy friend likes feathers.
BETH He was no better himself, by all accounts. But that's all by the way. That last term, I kept having a recurring nightmare. I was starting a journey from a town I knew well, but under some vague threat, then taking roads that were less and less familiar for hundreds of miles, until I came to a narrow valley bathed in evening sunshine, where I knew I'd been years before. A farmer mowing a hay field; cattle grazing in a meadow; a curl of smoke rising from the farmhouse chimney …
ANNE Doesn't sound like a nightmare. Quite an idyllic scene, in fact.
BETH Yes, but that's what made it all the more terrible. The same sense of danger was getting stronger, but I couldn't put my finger on any particular reason. Then I came to that inn – or one that might have been its twin – and the feeling intensified even more. Although everything seemed utterly peaceful, I knew that something horrendous was getting very near and I desperately didn't want to meet it. And the only way to escape it was through that tunnel.
ANNE Brrrr! Scary. What was the something?
BETH I never knew. And no one could tell me where the tunnel led, so I dithered about taking it.
ANNE So what did you do?
BETH Sometimes I'd go into the tunnel, sometimes I'd force myself to face whatever it was that was coming. But usually I woke up about then.
ANNE Are you still having them?
BETH Not so often. But every now and again it comes back, usually after something's reminded me of it. I'll probably have it again tonight.
ANNE I hope you didn't tell your uncle Bill about it.
BETH Why not?
ANNE From my impression of him, he'd be sure to say you should see a shrink about it.
BETH We don't have that sort of money, just to be told I'd been afraid of leaving the womb or something of the sort.
ANNE I suppose not. And Mum says anyone would have to be mad to see a psychiatrist when simply talking to someone with a bit of common sense would do far more good.
BETH Someone like her, you mean?
ANNE Well, perhaps. Actually, it wouldn't do any harm to mention it to her. I remember once …
BETH Yes?
ANNE It was a long time ago and a bit vague now. But for several months I kept having dreams about being in some high place and likely to fall off - a railway bridge with a train coming, or a tower with a crumbling parapet - that kind of thing. Every time I'd half-wake in the middle of it, realise I was having a nightmare, and struggle to get out of it, but invariably I'd drift back in.
BETH Well?
ANNE Mum suggested that during the interlude, I should equip myself with whatever was needed to deal with the dream situation. So the next time I found myself on that bridge, I made sure of having a parachute for the drop.
BETH Lucky you happened to have one handy in the middle of the night.
ANNE Clot! Just mentally, of course.
BETH Did it work?
ANNE Well, I've never had a nightmare since - that, or any other.
BETH What started them off, do you think?
ANNE I dunno. I could have understood it if it had been about ghosts or ghouls or what have you -
BETH Why?
&nbs
p; ANNE Well, there'd been a film crew here making some horror movie. They shot part of it in this valley - the peaceful façade of country life, I suppose, with all the sinister stuff going on behind it.
BETH (Sharply) When was that?
ANNE About six or seven years ago, I suppose. Why the sudden interest?
BETH That's it! I saw that film.
ANNE So …?
BETH That inn must have been used for some of the scenes. That's how I knew about it. And why I associated it with the horrors.
ANNE Right. There's only one way to get rid of those.
BETH Oh, what's that?
ANNE A bar lunch there. They do a pretty good one - and as it's for your benefit, you can pay for it! Come on!
Exeunt
CURTAIN
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