According to YES

by Dawn French

  Kemble watches his son and despite himself, he laughs. One wilting look from Glenn wipes that smile off his face in the next heartbeat. Glenn will not abide any betrayal, and boy, does Kemble know it.

  ‘Granpop,’ pipes up Red, happy and relieved now that the pen debacle is over, ‘we do this thing with Rosie where we listen to noises or thinkings in our heads which make words pop up. Wanna try?’

  ‘OK,’ says Thomas, ‘but you go first, so’s I can see how to do it.’

  Red – ‘Umm, OK, umm, …’

  Three jumps in – ‘Stones, sky, heart …’

  Red – ‘Yeah, yeah, hot-dogs, happy,’ then he whispers, ‘Hermione.’

  Teddy – ‘Girls, music, girls …’

  Rosie – ‘Love love love. Sorry, bit gooey, but that’s what I see and feel up here.’

  Thomas – ‘Yes, and apparently, all you need is love.’

  Rosie – ‘Well, yes, that and cake. And cotton bedlinen. And a head massage. So all you really need is love, cake, cotton and a head massage.’

  Thomas – ‘Right.’

  Rosie – ‘And a pony. Just one tiny pony, then that’s it …’

  Three – ‘Stop being so greedy, Rosie! C’mon Grandad, what are yours, really?’

  Thomas – ‘Shadows. Light. Future. Grandsons.’

  Teddy – ‘Go granpop! Awesome.’

  Kemble has heard all this, and he notes that Thomas skips a generation, straight to ‘grandson’, when he is summoning his key words. No surprise. What would his own words about himself be, he wonders? Perhaps ‘Idiot. Moron. Failure. Wuss.’ Yeah, that’s about right.

  Glenn sips her glass of water and looks out over Manhattan to distract herself from thinking of any pertinent words whatsoever. Hopefully, this irritating jollity will be over soon.

  Later on, when everyone has gone in, Iva takes a moment whilst she is cleaning up to sit down. She pulls a packet of cigarettes out of her apron pocket, along with a lighter. She puts fire to the tobacco and sits back to suck in a long long drag of the deadly delicious smoke, pauses to let the vapour fill up her lungs, then she slowly releases her smokey breath into the night sky. She finishes off the half-left bottle of beer on the table next to her, which Teddy has forgotten. She sits and she thinks, ‘This family is different recently. It’s better in some ways, but Mrs W. B. is on edge, more than usual.’

  This woman Rosie … yes, Iva likes her … but there’s something … what was it she said to Iva in the kitchen that night? Oh yes.

  ‘I’m here for the boys …’

  Hmmmm.

  ACT III

  * * *

  Nookie

  They are back in room 610. Their room. Thomas and Rosie have found a kind of heaven in the huge bath together. His head is by her feet and vice versa, except he is much longer, so his feet and head are much further out. Rosie is virtually submerged beneath the mountain of bubbles, which are swirling around while she attempts to squeeze a tune out of her clasped hands which fart bubbles upwards. Phhht, phht, phht, phht phht phht,

  ‘Come on, it’s so obvious …’ she challenges him.

  ‘Do I definitely know it?’

  ‘YES. YOU. DO! Unless you’re dead. Which you’re not … yet. Honestly, everyone knows it.’

  ‘Do it again, then.’

  She starts at the beginning again, spurting the water, phhht phht phht …

  ‘Nope. Got no idea,’ he puts his hands in the air.

  ‘Give in?’

  ‘Yep. Surrender.’

  ‘You are going to kick yourself and find it hard to hold your head up ever again you’ll feel such a fool.’

  ‘OK, OK, enough with the torture, what was it?’

  ‘ “God Save the Queen”. HA!’

  ‘Ah, well, no, that ain’t fair, lady, because it’s not “God Save the Queen” to me. For any American, that tune is “My Country ’Tis of Thee …” ’

  ‘What?!’

  ‘Yep,’ he sings it to the same tune, “My country ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing.” See?’

  ‘Oh, that’s such a cheat. How come you stole our national anthem? And anyway, you should still have recognized the tune …’

  ‘I guess I just don’t speak bubble … come here …’ he reaches out to pull her over to him and as she moves towards him, she rises out of the water, covered in foam.

  ‘Look at you,’ he says, ‘my frothy Venus.’

  She scrapes some of the bubbles from her hips and her belly, and shapes them into a beard on his face, then sits back on her haunches to look at him with his white whiskers,

  ‘Rip Van Winkle. He he he.’

  ‘Hey! Mind you, I do feel like I’ve been asleep for years,’ he reaches for her hands, ‘and you’ve woken me up. You’re a marvel, Rosie. Truly.’

  Rosie kneels astride his lap and clasps his big head in her hands, pulling his face upwards. She takes her time to really look at him. She is positioned slightly above him, and she likes the fact that she is in control of how, and how long, she can be there. It’s so clear that Rosie isn’t the kind of woman who needs to assert her power in any kind of overt way ordinarily, but like all women comfortable in their skin, occasionally she enjoys flexing her confidence. How else do you know where the edges of it are? In this oily bath, perched on top of Thomas, Rosie decides to take charge. Thomas senses the shift, and is very happy to comply. He is warm and wet and willing. He can see that her face changes from a tender gaze to something more serious. Her eyes focus on him in an entirely different, carnal way. She starts to press herself down on him and she rocks gently back and forth, never once taking her eyes off his. The honesty and the audacity of her is utterly thrilling, and his jaw sets as he feels the first twitches of arousal. Rosie is tuned in to him, and she perfectly knows how to grind against him for best effect. The slosh of the water making way for their rhythms adds to the sensory whirl, and Rosie starts to make low moans as she feels her own desire well up. She breathes deep and hard, synchronizing with the strokes of her movements. Thomas can tell that although Rosie is looking directly at him, the place she is ascending to is singular. This is the mystery of sex, a curious and complicated dance, where in order to be truly together, it’s vital to be selfish. Thomas knows this is her moment to take, to take herself far inside her head, where her real sex lives. Rubbing and kissing and licking and murmurs have their glorious part to play of course, but the real juice comes from the pit of her, her inmost place, her animal mind. That’s where prehistory takes over, and dictates it all.

  Thomas slips his hand under the water, underneath her, and deftly finds the nub of her. His other hand steadies his erect penis ready for her to slide down onto. When she does, she tips her head back as if to make her whole body into an even longer channel for him. She closes her eyes and sees colours on the inside of her lids, flashing reds and purples as she gives in to instinct.

  Thomas rolls with her heaves and twists, fast and slow, as he watches her fleshy body ripple and writhe above him. She’s a human thunderstorm, she’s a tornado, unstoppable. His temples are pounding as she gathers him up in her vortex and for a short wonderful while, they flow together, rotating on the same axis, towards a splendid inevitability. He loves how the water holds them, how she is orchestrating it. She arches her body, trembling. The exquisite judder sucks the cum out of helpless him, and for one short shot moment, they are both suspended as they hold their breath and pulsate into the stillness … It’s lovely. It’s lovely. It’s bloody lovely …

  THEN.

  ‘You OK?’

  ‘Sure,’ he pants, ‘you did all the work, toots. I just tried to keep up with the carnival. Old man dancing.’

  She sits back on his lap and looks at him, then leans in to kiss his lovely mouth. He hugs her close and they stay like this for a while, listening to each other’s heartbeats gradually slowing to normal.

  ‘Thank you my love,’ he whispers, ‘for letting me in to this happiness. It’s rare.’


  They hold each other very tight, lest one of them might fall back into cold reality. They really don’t want that. Just yet.

  The Law

  Inside an expensive midtown divorce lawyer’s office, on opposite sides of a modernist concrete-topped table sitting on sleek Phillipe Starck chairs, there are six sombre people. Glenn, Kemble and their lawyer, Natalie and her lawyer whose thrusting young firm this is, and a secretary taking notes. Other than the people, the table and the chairs, the room is devoid of anything except a startlingly good view of Lower Manhattan from the wall of twentieth-floor windows. The room contains nothing. Including mercy or heart.

  Natalie is staring over at Kemble. His promises to do the right thing hang heavily in the air. She worries that he is not returning her gaze. Glenn, however, has no such reticence, and locks her eyes on Natalie, utterly unflinching.

  She nods for their lawyer to kick off. ‘My client feels that since your client has hardly seen the children in the last couple of months, she has little right to request full custody, care and control,’ he says, peering over his thick-rimmed black spectacles.

  Natalie’s jaw drops open, she is astonished. She darts a fierce look at Kemble, who still averts his gaze. ‘Kemble?’

  Kemble raises his eyes to Natalie, trying to be strong. This is his moment, but he seems unable to speak.

  She prompts him, ‘What do you want, Kemble?’

  Kemble is staring at her, paralysed. For a tiny second it looks as if he might keep his promise to her … then he makes the fatal mistake of glancing at his mother.

  Glenn takes up the gauntlet, ‘In the end, Natalie, you must surely agree that you have not been the wife Kemble was led to believe he was marrying …’

  Natalie is horrified, ‘ “Led to believe?!” What do you mean? I have never once misled Kemble into believing I am anything other than the person I’ve always been. Unlike him … Kemble, please … speak!’

  ‘For instance,’ Glenn ploughs on, ‘Kemble was under the impression that you would wind down your work commitments once you became a mother so that you could be at home with your sons. This hasn’t happened, and is a clear breach of the understanding between you. One of many. All of which are detailed in these documents …’

  ‘Kemble!?’ Natalie persists.

  ‘You have misrepresented yourself, Natalie, and sadly it has come to this. The boys cannot be expected to remain living with a mother whose relationship with the truth is tenuous at best, and whose relationship with her own mental health and even her relationship with alcohol on occasion, might be brought into question should she choose to refute the claims. Don’t let this get ugly, Natalie. Trust me. Don’t.’

  Everyone in the modernly sparse room is simultaneously aghast at the level of Glenn’s caustic smackdown, even her own lawyer, and especially her son, who has overtly slumped his head down on his folded arms on the table, so hideous is all this. He is hyperventilating.

  Natalie, however, can hardly breathe at all. There is so much she could, and wants to say, but unlike Kemble she is a person of her word, and she promised him way back when that she would keep his counsel. Even now, when her happiness is at stake, Natalie remains true to that word, hoping against hope that this pathetically diminished and damaged man she once loved can finally find an iota of courage in his back pocket. She pleads with him one last time, ‘Kemble. Please say What. You. Want.’

  Kemble slowly lifts up his head, and looks at Natalie. What he sees there hurts his eyes, his head, his heart. He turns to his mother. Will he, can he, stand up to her?

  Glenn quickly answers that thought. ‘Kemble. Tell Natalie What. You. Want.’

  All eyes are on Kemble. He carries on staring.

  He will not, for some godforsaken reason, speak. It’s as though he will stare forever. They all wait.

  Then Natalie gives up on him, and she turns to face Glenn full on. ‘I want my children.’

  Glenn answers, ‘Kemble wants his children too.’

  Kemble looks down at his papers, defeated, small and insignificant. There is very little left of him.

  Beneath

  It’s Friday night, and for the first time since she arrived in this household, Rosie is alone in the apartment. The Wilder-Binghams are all away for the weekend, visiting Glenn’s last and very elderly aunt in her swanky care facility in Boston. Aunt Jess was her mother’s youngest sibling and is still pegging on at age ninety-three, with no teeth and a hairy chin. The boys, old and young, dread these visits, but know that they are mandatory. Glenn goes six times a year and always tries to take as many family members as possible to liven the visits up. Otherwise it’s just Glenn and Jess sitting opposite each other, whilst Glenn dredges around in her childhood for any mutual memories that just might stir Jess, and form a mnemonic bridge for her to cross into the now. Jess sits and looks at the person opposite through hazy cataract eyes, wondering who on earth she could be, this woman sharing her raft in the middle of the sea … the sea … the sea …

  Iva is staying the weekend with her Polish friends in Greenpoint so Rosie has complete peace, which is something she has been longing for, some time to properly think. The entire apartment is there for her to mooch about in, but Rosie chooses to retreat to her private lair. She remains in her rooms, turns the TV to CNN to have the wallpaper of the world for company, takes a gulp of lovely red wine and runs a bath.

  As she dips into the warm water, she exhales and allows the heat to soothe her muscles and her mind. She lies down with her head back on the cold ceramic lip of the bath, closes her eyes and memories of the bath she had with Thomas come flooding in, and put a broad smile on her face and a tingle in her fanny.

  Rosie is extremely skilled at compartmentalizing, she has always done it, and actually, it has served her well. If difficult or sad things are happening to Rosie, she can put them on a mental back burner while she gets on with her life. She’s proud of that ability, She won’t allow anything to hold her back. She can’t.

  So why is she crying?

  A steady stream of tears drip down sideways, past her ears and plop gently into the water. It’s strange to cry whilst horizontal, something akin to drowning happens at the back of the throat. Pretty soon Rosie sits up, but still the tears keep coming. At first her weeping is soundless, and Rosie thinks it will be over shortly, that it’s surely controllable. Then, suddenly, her face creases into a grimace and from somewhere visceral there comes a bellowing, big sob. She tilts her head back to release it, and she cradles herself around her breasts to find some small comfort. Where is this coming from, and why does it hurt so much? She feels as though her heart is physically tearing apart, and her only release is to wail. Never before has she heard such a pitiful sound, least of all coming from herself. She is helpless to resist it, the bawling has her in its sorry grip, and a tsunami of tears engulfs her. They keep coming, and coming, until she is convulsing with it. How has she contained such sadness? Her whole body churns, retching the misery out. What is it? What is it? Get it out. Get it all out.

  She wants her mum. It hurts. It hurts.

  Just when she can’t manage any more misery, mercifully, the howling starts to subside, and she can gasp some deeper breaths. She lets the air flow in, out, in, out of her, until she begins to believe that finally, the roaring storm of sadness has passed.

  She is wracked by it. She looks up towards the light in the centre of the bathroom, as if the answers might be there, where more illumination is. Why does light help you to think? But it seems it does, because that’s when Rosie knows that all these tears are in fact, grief. Here, at last, is her mourning for the relentlessly unarrived child. Rosie realizes she is crying not only for the child she will never have, but also for the child she was whilst her mother and father were alive. And for the children in her care, whose happiness in this world is fragile.

  She is no-one’s mother.

  She is no-one’s daughter.

  Rosie is mourning for her whole world.

/>   These low moans are her belated lament. Only now, alone, does Rosie know the size of the ache. It’s huge. Overwhelmingly huge. At least now, with some of it cried out, she can feel a tiny bit lighter, and at least she has surrendered to it at last. She has admitted her gnawing infertility and all the subsequent levels of complicated pain she has known because of it. She’s started to be honest.

  She hauls her abjectly sorry self out of the bath and peers at her reflection in the mirror. ‘What a puffy mess,’ she thinks, ‘what poor child would want this wretched potato-faced twot for a mother anyway?!’ But, just as she used to witness other crabby Cornish women in her family do in moments of crisis, Rosie summons her courage, has a big sniff and tells herself to ‘get on, maid’. She reaches for her green Chinese silk second-hand shop dressing gown, and she brushes her hair. The pull and pull again of the brush through the tangles is reminiscent of childhood Sunday-night bathtimes, and is soothing. She massages some moisturizing cream into her face and she dips a big puffer into some rose-scented talc and pats it all over her body. Here is the familiar smell of her darlin’ mum, and her gran and her aunts to give her solace. Then she ties the dressing gown loosely at the waist, rubs her sore eyes, and pads out into the corridor, heading towards the kitchen and a restorative cuppatea, all one word.

  When she turns on the light in the cavernous kitchen, Rosie stops in her tracks. Kemble is sitting at the counter, hunched over his laptop, nursing a whisky. His fifth, as it happens.

  ‘Oh God, sorry, didn’t realize anyone was here.’ She feels instantly uneasy and heads for the kettle.

  ‘Yeah, you don’t sob that loud if you think anyone can hear …’ he says, insensitively.

  Clearly, Rosie imagines, he speaks from experience.