ANNA turns to look at KATE.
ANNA
Yes.
DEELEY
Sometimes I take her face in my hands and look at it.
ANNA
Really?
DEELEY
Yes, I look at it, holding it in my hands. Then I kind of let it go, take my hands away, leave it floating.
KATE
My head is quite fixed. I have it on.
DEELEY
(To ANNA.) It just floats away.
ANNA
She was always a dreamer.
ANNA sits.
Sometimes, walking, in the park, I’d say to her, you’re dreaming, you’re dreaming, wake up, what are you dreaming? and she’d look round at me, flicking her hair, and look at me as if I were part of her dream.
Pause
One day she said to me, I’ve slept through Friday. No you haven’t, I said, what do you mean? I’ve slept right through Friday, she said. But today is Friday, I said, it’s been Friday all day, it’s now Friday night, you haven’t slept through Friday. Yes I have, she said, I’ve slept right through it, today is Saturday.
DEELEY
You mean she literally didn’t know what day it was?
ANNA
No.
KATE
Yes I did. It was Saturday.
Pause
DEELEY
What month are we in?
KATE
September.
Pause
DEELEY
We’re forcing her to think. We must see you more often. You’re a healthy influence.
ANNA
But she was always a charming companion.
DEELEY
Fun to live with?
ANNA
Delightful.
DEELEY
Lovely to look at, delightful to know.
ANNA
Ah, those songs. We used to play them, all of them, all the time, late at night, lying on the floor, lovely old things. Sometimes I’d look at her face, but she was quite unaware of my gaze.
DEELEY
Gaze?
ANNA
What?
DEELEY
The word gaze. Don’t hear it very often.
ANNA
Yes, quite unaware of it. She was totally absorbed.
DEELEY
In Lovely to look at, delightful to know?
KATE
(To ANNA.) I don’t know that song. Did we have it?
DEELEY
(Singing, to KATE.) You’re lovely to look at, delightful to know…
ANNA
Oh we did. Yes, of course. We had them all.
DEELEY
(Singing.) Blue moon, I see you standing alone…
ANNA
(Singing.) The way you comb your hair …
DEELEY
(Singing.) Oh no they can’t take that away from me…
ANNA
(Singing.) Oh but you’re lovely, with your smile so warm …
DEELEY
(Singing.) I’ve got a woman crazy for me. She’s funny that way.
Slight pause
ANNA
(Singing.) You are the promised kiss of springtime …
DEELEY
(Singing.) And someday I’ll know that moment divine,
When all the things you are, are mine!
Slight pause
ANNA
(Singing.) I get no kick from champagne,
Mere alcohol doesn’t thrill me at all,
So tell me why should it be true –
DEELEY
(Singing.) That I get a kick out of you?
Pause
ANNA
(Singing.) They asked me how I knew
My true love was true,
I of course replied,
Something here inside
Cannot be denied.
DEELEY
(Singing.) When a lovely flame dies …
ANNA
(Singing.) Smoke gets in your eyes.
Pause
DEELEY
(Singing.) The sigh of midnight trains in empty stations …
Pause
ANNA
(Singing.) The park at evening when the bell has sounded …
Pause
DEELEY
(Singing.) The smile of Garbo and the scent of roses …
ANNA
(Singing.) The waiters whistling as the last bar closes …
DEELEY
(Singing.) Oh, how the ghost of you clings …
Pause
They don’t make them like that any more.
Silence
What happened to me was this. I popped into a fleapit to see Odd Man Out. Some bloody awful summer afternoon, walking in no direction. I remember thinking there was something familiar about the neighbourhood and suddenly recalled that it was in this very neighbourhood that my father bought me my first tricycle, the only tricycle in fact I ever possessed. Anyway, there was the bicycle shop and there was this fleapit showing Odd Man Out and there were two usherettes standing in the foyer and one of them was stroking her breasts and the other one was saying ‘dirty bitch’ and the one stroking her breasts was saying ‘mmnnn’ with a very sensual relish and smiling at her fellow usherette, so I marched in on this excruciatingly hot summer afternoon in the middle of nowhere and watched Odd Man Out and thought Robert Newton was fantastic. And I still think he was fantastic. And I would commit murder for him, even now. And there was only one other person in the cinema, one other person in the whole of the whole cinema, and there she is. And there she was, very dim, very still, placed more or less I would say at the dead centre of the auditorium. I was off centre and have remained so. And I left when the film was over, noticing, even though James Mason was dead, that the first usherette appeared to be utterly exhausted, and I stood for a moment in the sun, thinking I suppose about something and then this girl came out and I think looked about her and I said wasn’t Robert Newton fantastic, and she said something or other, Christ knows what, but looked at me, and I thought Jesus this is it, I’ve made a catch, this is a trueblue pickup, and when we had sat down in the café with tea she looked into her cup and then up at me and told me she thought Robert Newton was remarkable. So it was Robert Newton who brought us together and it is only Robert Newton who can tear us apart.
Pause
ANNA
F. J. McCormick was good too.
DEELEY
I know F. J. McCormick was good too. But he didn’t bring us together.
Pause
DEELEY
You’ve seen the film then?
ANNA
Yes.
DEELEY
When?
ANNA
Oh … long ago.
Pause
DEELEY
(To KATE.) Remember that film?
KATE
Oh yes. Very well.
Pause
DEELEY
I think I am right in saying the next time we met we held hands. I held her cool hand, as she walked by me, and I said something which made her smile, and she looked at me, didn’t you, flicking her hair back, and I thought she was even more fantastic than Robert Newton.
Pause
And then at a slightly later stage our naked bodies met, hers cool, warm, highly agreeable, and I wondered what Robert Newton would think of this. What would he think of this I wondered as I touched her profoundly all over. (To ANNA.) What do you think he’d think?
ANNA
I never met Robert Newton but I do know I know what you mean. There are some things one remembers even though they may never have happened. There are things I remember which may never have happened but as I recall them so they take place.
DEELEY
What?
ANNA
This man crying in our room. One night late I returned and found him sobbing, his hand over his face, sitting in the armchair, all crumpled in the armchair and Katey sitting on the bed with a mug of cof
fee and no one spoke to me, no one spoke, no one looked up. There was nothing I could do. I undressed and switched out the light and got into my bed, the curtains were thin, the light from the street came in, Katey still, on her bed, the man sobbed, the light came in, it flicked the wall, there was a slight breeze, the curtains occasionally shook, there was nothing but sobbing, suddenly it stopped. The man came over to me, quickly, looked down at me, but I would have absolutely nothing to do with him, nothing.
Pause
No, no, I’m quite wrong … he didn’t move quickly … that’s quite wrong … he moved … very slowly, the light was bad, and stopped. He stood in the centre of the room. He looked at us both, at our beds. Then he turned towards me. He approached my bed. He bent down over me. But I would have nothing to do with him, absolutely nothing.
Pause
DEELEY
What kind of man was he?
ANNA
But after a while I heard him go out. I heard the front door close, and footsteps in the street, then silence, then the footsteps fade away, and then silence.
Pause
But then sometime later in the night I woke up and looked across the room to her bed and saw two shapes.
DEELEY
He’d come back!
ANNA
He was lying across her lap on her bed.
DEELEY
A man in the dark across my wife’s lap?
Pause
ANNA
But then in the early morning … he had gone.
DEELEY
Thank Christ for that.
ANNA
It was as if he had never been.
DEELEY
Of course he’d been. He went twice and came once.
Pause
Well, what an exciting story that was.
Pause
What did he look like, this fellow?
ANNA
Oh, I never saw his face clearly. I don’t know.
DEELEY
But was he – ?
KATE stands. She goes to a small table, takes a cigarette from a box and lights it. She looks down at ANNA.
KATE
You talk of me as if I were dead.
ANNA
No, no, you weren’t dead, you were so lively, so animated, you used to laugh –
DEELEY
Of course you did. I made you smile myself, didn’t I? walking along the street, holding hands. You smiled fit to bust.
ANNA
Yes, she could be so … animated.
DEELEY
Animated is no word for it. When she smiled … how can I describe it?
ANNA
Her eyes lit up.
DEELEY
I couldn’t have put it better myself.
DEELEY stands, goes to cigarette box, picks it up, smiles at KATE. KATE looks at him, watches him light a cigarette, takes the box from him, crosses to ANNA, offers her a cigarette. ANNA takes one.
ANNA
You weren’t dead. Ever. In any way.
KATE
I said you talk about me as if I am dead. Now.
ANNA
How can you say that? How can you say that, when I’m looking at you now, seeing you so shyly poised over me, looking down at me –
DEELEY
Stop that!
Pause
KATE sits.
DEELEY pours a drink.
DEELEY
Myself I was a student then, juggling with my future, wondering should I bejasus saddle myself with a slip of a girl not long out of her swaddling clothes whose only claim to virtue was silence but who lacked any sense of fixedness, any sense of decisiveness, but was compliant only to the shifting winds, with which she went, but not the winds, and certainly not my winds, such as they are, but I suppose winds that only she understood, and that of course with no understanding whatsoever, at least as I understand the word, at least that’s the way I figured it. A classic female figure, I said to myself, or is it a classic female posture, one way or the other long outworn.
Pause
That’s the position as I saw it then. I mean, that is my categorical pronouncement on the position as I saw it then. Twenty years ago.
Silence
ANNA
When I heard that Katey was married my heart leapt with joy.
DEELEY
How did the news reach you?
ANNA
From a friend.
Pause
Yes, it leapt with joy. Because you see I knew she never did things loosely or carelessly, recklessly. Some people throw a stone into a river to see if the water’s too cold for jumping, others, a few others, will always wait for the ripples before they will jump.
DEELEY
Some people do what? (To KATE.) What did she say?
ANNA
And I knew that Katey would always wait not just for the first emergence of ripple but for the ripples to pervade and pervade the surface, for of course as you know ripples on the surface indicate a shimmering in depth down through every particle of water down to the river bed, but even when she felt that happen, when she was assured it was happening, she still might not jump. But in this case she did jump and I knew therefore she had fallen in love truly and was glad. And I deduced it must also have happened to you.
DEELEY
You mean the ripples?
ANNA
If you like.
DEELEY
Do men ripple too?
ANNA
Some, I would say.
DEELEY
I see.
Pause
ANNA
And later when I found out the kind of man you were I was doubly delighted because I knew Katey had always been interested in the arts.
KATE
I was interested once in the arts, but I can’t remember now which ones they were.
ANNA
Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten our days at the Tate? and how we explored London and all the old churches and all the old buildings, I mean those that were left from the bombing, in the City and south of the river in Lambeth and Greenwich? Oh my goodness. Oh yes. And the Sunday papers! I could never get her away from the review pages. She ravished them, and then insisted we visit that gallery, or this theatre, or that chamber concert, but of course there was so much, so much to see and to hear, in lovely London then, that sometimes we missed things, or had no more money, and so missed some things. For example, I remember one Sunday she said to me, looking up from the paper, come quick, quick, come with me quickly, and we seized our handbags and went, on a bus, to some totally obscure, some totally unfamiliar district and, almost alone, saw a wonderful film called Odd Man Out.
Silence
DEELEY
Yes, I do quite a bit of travelling in my job.
ANNA
Do you enjoy it?
DEELEY
Enormously. Enormously.
ANNA
Do you go far?
DEELEY
I travel the globe in my job.
ANNA
And poor Katey when you’re away? What does she do?
ANNA looks at KATE.
KATE
Oh, I continue.
ANNA
Is he away for long periods?
KATE
I think, sometimes. Are you?
ANNA
You leave your wife for such long periods? How can you?
DEELEY
I have to do a lot of travelling in my job.
ANNA
(To KATE.) I think I must come and keep you company when he’s away.
DEELEY
Won’t your husband miss you?
ANNA
Of course. But he would understand.
DEELEY
Does he understand now?
ANNA
Of course.
DEELEY
We had a vegetarian dish prepared for him.
ANNA
He’s not a vegetarian. In fact he’s something of a go
urmet. We live in a rather fine villa and have done so for many years. It’s very high up, on the cliffs.
DEELEY
You eat well up there, eh?
ANNA
I would say so, yes.
DEELEY
Yes, I know Sicily slightly. Just slightly. Taormina. Do you live in Taormina?
ANNA
Just outside.
DEELEY
Just outside, yes. Very high up. Yes, I’ve probably caught a glimpse of your villa.
Pause
My work took me to Sicily. My work concerns itself with life all over, you see, in every part of the globe. With people all over the globe. I use the word globe because the word world possesses emotional political sociological and psychological pretensions and resonances which I prefer as a matter of choice to do without, or shall I say to steer clear of, or if you like to reject. How’s the yacht?
ANNA
Oh, very well.
DEELEY
Captain steer a straight course?
ANNA
As straight as we wish, when we wish it.
DEELEY
Don’t you find England damp, returning?
ANNA
Rather beguilingly so.
DEELEY
Rather beguilingly so? (To himself.) What the hell does she mean by that?
Pause
Well, any time your husband finds himself in this direction my little wife will be only too glad to put the old pot on the old gas stove and dish him up something luscious if not voluptuous. No trouble.
Pause
I suppose his business interests kept him from making the trip. What’s his name? Gian Carlo or Per Paulo?
KATE
(To ANNA.) Do you have marble floors?
ANNA
Yes.
KATE
Do you walk in bare feet on them?
ANNA
Yes. But I wear sandals on the terrace, because it can be rather severe on the soles.
KATE
The sun, you mean? The heat.
ANNA
Yes.
DEELEY
I had a great crew in Sicily. A marvellous cameraman. Irving Shultz. Best in the business. We took a pretty austere look at the women in black. The little old women in black. I wrote the film and directed it. My name is Orson Welles.
KATE
(To ANNA.) Do you drink orange juice on your terrace in the morning, and bullshots at sunset, and look down at the sea?
ANNA
Sometimes, yes.
DEELEY
As a matter of fact I am at the top of my profession, as a matter of fact, and I have indeed been associated with substantial numbers of articulate and sensitive people, mainly prostitutes of all kinds.
Harold Pinter Plays 3 Page 17
