REBECCA
By the way, there’s something I’ve been dying to tell you.
DEVLIN
What?
REBECCA
It was when I was writing a note, a few notes for the laundry. Well … to put it bluntly … a laundry list. Well, I put my pen on that little coffee table and it rolled off.
DEVLIN
No?
REBECCA
It rolled right off, onto the carpet. In front of my eyes.
DEVLIN
Good God.
REBECCA
This pen, this perfectly innocent pen.
DEVLIN
You can’t know it was innocent.
REBECCA
Why not?
DEVLIN
Because you don’t know where it had been. You don’t know how many other hands have held it, how many other hands have written with it, what other people have been doing with it. You know nothing of its history. You know nothing of its parents’ history.
REBECCA
A pen has no parents.
Pause.
DEVLIN
You can’t sit there and say things like that.
REBECCA
I can sit here.
DEVLIN
You can’t sit there and say things like that.
REBECCA
You don’t believe I’m entitled to sit here? You don’t think I’m entitled to sit in this chair, in the place where I live?
DEVLIN
I’m saying that you’re not entitled to sit in that chair or in or on any other chair and say things like that and it doesn’t matter whether you live here or not.
REBECCA
I’m not entitled to say things like what?
DEVLIN
That that pen was innocent.
REBECCA
You think it was guilty?
Silence.
DEVLIN
I’m letting you off the hook. Have you noticed? I’m letting you slip. Or perhaps it’s me who’s slipping. It’s dangerous. Do you notice? I’m in a quicksand.
REBECCA
Like God.
DEVLIN
God? God? You think God is sinking into a quicksand? That’s what I would call a truly disgusting perception. If it can be dignified by the word perception. Be careful how you talk about God. He’s the only God we have. If you let him go he won’t come back. He won’t even look back over his shoulder. And then what will you do? You know what it’ll be like, such a vacuum? It’ll be like England playing Brazil at Wembley and not a soul in the stadium. Can you imagine? Playing both halves to a totally empty house. The game of the century. Absolute silence. Not a soul watching. Absolute silence. Apart from the referee’s whistle and a fair bit of fucking and blinding. If you turn away from God it means that the great and noble game of soccer will fall into permanent oblivion. No score for extra time after extra time after extra time, no score for time everlasting, for time without end. Absence. Stalemate. Paralysis. A world without a winner.
Pause.
I hope you get the picture.
Pause.
Now let me say this. A little while ago you made … shall we say … you made a somewhat oblique reference to your bloke … your lover? … and babies and mothers, et cetera. And platforms. I inferred from this that you were talking about some kind of atrocity. Now let me ask you this. What authority do you think you yourself possess which would give you the right to discuss such an atrocity?
REBECCA
I have no such authority. Nothing has ever happened to me. Nothing has ever happened to any of my friends. I have never suffered. Nor have my friends.
DEVLIN
Good.
Pause.
Shall we talk more intimately? Let’s talk about more intimate things, let’s talk about something more personal, about something within your own immediate experience. I mean, for example, when the hairdresser takes your head in his hands and starts to wash your hair very gently and to massage your scalp, when he does that, when your eyes are closed and he does that, he has your entire trust, doesn’t he? It’s not just your head which is in his hands, is it, it’s your life, it’s your spiritual … welfare.
Pause.
So you see what I wanted to know was this … when your lover had his hand on your throat, did he remind you of your hairdresser?
Pause.
I’m talking about your lover. The man who tried to murder you.
REBECCA
Murder me?
DEVLIN
Do you to death.
REBECCA
No, no. He didn’t try to murder me. He didn’t want to murder me.
DEVLIN
He suffocated you and strangled you. As near as makes no difference. According to your account. Didn’t he?
REBECCA
No, no. He felt compassion for me. He adored me.
Pause.
Did he have a name, this chap? Was he a foreigner? And where was I at the time? What do you want me to understand? Were you unfaithful to me? Why didn’t you confide in me? Why didn’t you confess? You would have felt so much better. Honestly. You could have treated me like a priest. You could have put me on my mettle. I’ve always wanted to be put on my mettle. It used to be one of my lifetime ambitions. Now I’ve missed my big chance. Unless all this happened before I met you. In which case you have no obligation to tell me anything. Your past is not my business. I wouldn’t dream of telling you about my past. Not that I had one. When you lead a life of scholarship you can’t be bothered with the humorous realities, you know, tits, that kind of thing. Your mind is on other things, have you got an attentive landlady, can she come up with bacon and eggs after eleven o’clock at night, is the bed warm, does the sun rise in the right direction, is the soup cold? Only once in a blue moon do you wobble the chambermaid’s bottom, on the assumption there is one – chambermaid not bottom – but of course none of this applies when you have a wife. When you have a wife you let thought, ideas and reflection take their course. Which means you never let the best man win. Fuck the best man, that’s always been my motto. It’s the man who ducks his head and moves on through no matter what wind or weather who gets there in the end. A man with guts and application.
Pause.
A man who doesn’t give a shit.
A man with a rigid sense of duty.
Pause.
There’s no contradiction between those last two statements. Believe me.
Pause.
Do you follow the drift of my argument?
REBECCA
Oh yes, there’s something I’ve forgotten to tell you. It was funny. I looked out of the garden window, out of the window into the garden, in the middle of summer, in that house in Dorset, do you remember? Oh no, you weren’t there. I don’t think anyone else was there. No. I was all by myself. I was alone. I was looking out of the window and I saw a whole crowd of people walking through the woods, on their way to the sea, in the direction of the sea. They seemed to be very cold, they were wearing coats, although it was such a beautiful day. A beautiful, warm, Dorset day. They were carrying bags. There were … guides … ushering them, guiding them along. They walked through the woods and I could see them in the distance walking across the cliff and down to the sea. Then I lost sight of them. I was really quite curious so I went upstairs to the highest window in the house and I looked way over the top of the treetops and I could see down to the beach. The guides … were ushering all these people across the beach. It was such a lovely day. It was so still and the sun was shining. And I saw all these people walk into the sea. The tide covered them slowly. Their bags bobbed about in the waves.
DEVLIN
When was that? When did you live in Dorset? I’ve never lived in Dorset.
Pause.
REBECCA
Oh by the way somebody told me the other day that there’s a condition known as mental elephantiasis.
DEVLIN
What do you mean, ‘someb
ody told you’? What do you mean, ‘the other day’? What are you talking about?
REBECCA
This mental elephantiasis means that when you spill an ounce of gravy, for example, it immediately expands and becomes a vast sea of gravy. It becomes a sea of gravy which surrounds you on all sides and you suffocate in a voluminous sea of gravy. It’s terrible. But it’s all your own fault. You brought it upon yourself. You are not the victim of it, you are the cause of it. Because it was you who spilt the gravy in the first place, it was you who handed over the bundle.
Pause.
DEVLIN
The what?
REBECCA
The bundle.
Pause.
DEVLIN
So what’s the question? Are you prepared to drown in your own gravy? Or are you prepared to die for your country? Look. What do you say, sweetheart? Why don’t we go out and drive into town and take in a movie?
REBECCA
That’s funny, somewhere in a dream … a long time ago … I heard someone calling me sweetheart.
Pause.
I looked up. I’d been dreaming. I don’t know whether I looked up in the dream or as I opened my eyes. But in this dream a voice was calling. That I’m certain of. This voice was calling me. It was calling me sweetheart.
Pause.
Yes.
Pause.
I walked out into the frozen city. Even the mud was frozen. And the snow was a funny colour. It wasn’t white. Well, it was white but there were other colours in it. It was as if there were veins running through it. And it wasn’t smooth, as snow is, as snow should be. It was bumpy. And when I got to the railway station I saw the train. Other people were there.
Pause.
And my best friend, the man I had given my heart to, the man I knew was the man for me the moment we met, my dear, my most precious companion, I watched him walk down the platform and tear all the babies from the arms of their screaming mothers.
Silence.
DEVLIN
Did you see Kim and the kids?
She looks at him.
You were going to see Kim and the kids today.
She stares at him.
Your sister Kim and the kids.
REBECCA
Oh, Kim! And the kids, yes. Yes. Yes, of course I saw them. I had tea with them. Didn’t I tell you?
DEVLIN
No.
REBECCA
Of course I saw them.
Pause.
DEVLIN
How were they?
REBECCA
Ben’s talking.
DEVLIN
Really? What’s he saying?
REBECCA
Oh, things like ‘My name is Ben’. Things like that. And ‘Mummy’s name is Mummy’. Things like that.
DEVLIN
What about Betsy?
REBECCA
She’s crawling.
DEVLIN
No, really?
REBECCA
I think she’ll be walking before we know where we are. Honestly.
DEVLIN
Probably talking too. Saying things like ‘My name is Betsy’.
REBECCA
Yes, of course I saw them. I had tea with them. But oh … my poor sister … she doesn’t know what to do.
DEVLIN
What do you mean?
REBECCA
Well, he wants to come back … you know … he keeps phoning and asking her to take him back. He says he can’t bear it, he says he’s given the other one up, he says he’s living quite alone, he’s given the other one up.
DEVLIN
Has he?
REBECCA
He says he has. He says he misses the kids.
Pause.
DEVLIN
Does he miss his wife?
REBECCA
He says he’s given the other one up. He says it was never serious, you know, it was only sex.
DEVLIN
Ah.
Pause.
And Kim?
Pause.
And Kim?
REBECCA
She’ll never have him back. Never. She says she’ll never share a bed with him again. Never. Ever.
DEVLIN
Why not?
REBECCA
Never ever.
DEVLIN
But why not?
REBECCA
Of course I saw Kim and the kids. I had tea with them. Why did you ask? Did you think I didn’t see them?
DEVLIN
No. I didn’t know. It’s just that you said you were going to have tea with them.
REBECCA
Well, I did have tea with them! Why shouldn’t I? She’s my sister.
Pause.
Guess where I went after tea? To the cinema. I saw a film.
DEVLIN
Oh? What?
REBECCA
A comedy.
DEVLIN
Uh-huh? Was it funny? Did you laugh?
REBECCA
Other people laughed. Other members of the audience. It was funny.
DEVLIN
But you didn’t laugh?
REBECCA
Other people did. It was a comedy. There was a girl … you know … and a man. They were having lunch in a smart New York restaurant. He made her smile.
DEVLIN
How?
REBECCA
Well … he told her jokes.
DEVLIN
Oh, I see.
REBECCA
And then in the next scene he took her on an expedition to the desert, in a caravan. She’d never lived in a desert before, you see. She had to learn how to do it.
Pause.
DEVLIN
Sounds very funny.
REBECCA
But there was a man sitting in front of me, to my right. He was absolutely still throughout the whole film. He never moved, he was rigid, like a body with rigor mortis, he never laughed once, he just sat like a corpse. I moved far away from him, I moved as far away from him as I possibly could.
Silence.
DEVLIN
Now look, let’s start again. We live here. You don’t live … in Dorset … or anywhere else. You live here with me. This is our house. You have a very nice sister. She lives close to you. She has two lovely kids. You’re their aunt. You like that.
Pause.
You have a wonderful garden. You love your garden. You created it all by yourself. You have truly green fingers. You also have beautiful fingers.
Pause.
Did you hear what I said? I’ve just paid you a compliment. In fact I’ve just paid you a number of compliments. Let’s start again.
REBECCA
I don’t think we can start again. We started … a long time ago. We started. We can’t start again. We can end again.
DEVLIN
But we’ve never ended.
REBECCA
Oh, we have. Again and again and again. And we can end again. And again and again. And again.
DEVLIN
Aren’t you misusing the word ‘end’? End means end. You can’t end ‘again’. You can only end once.
REBECCA
No. You can end once and then you can end again.
Silence.
(singing softly) ‘Ashes to ashes’ –
DEVLIN
‘And dust to dust’ –
REBECCA
‘If the women don’t get you’ –
DEVLIN
‘The liquor must.’
Pause.
I always knew you loved me.
REBECCA
Why?
DEVLIN
Because we like the same tunes.
Silence.
Listen.
Pause.
Why have you never told me about this lover of yours before this? I have the right to be very angry indeed. Do you realise that? I have the right to be very angry indeed. Do you understand that?
Silence.
REBECCA
Oh
by the way there’s something I meant to tell you. I was standing in a room at the top of a very tall building in the middle of town. The sky was full of stars. I was about to close the curtains but I stayed at the window for a time looking up at the stars. Then I looked down. I saw an old man and a little boy walking down the street. They were both dragging suitcases. The little boy’s suitcase was bigger than he was. It was a very bright night. Because of the stars. The old man and the little boy were walking down the street. They were holding each other’s free hand. I wondered where they were going. Anyway, I was about to close the curtains but then I suddenly saw a woman following them, carrying a baby in her arms.
Pause.
Did I tell you the street was icy? It was icy. So she had to tread very carefully. Over the bumps. The stars were out. She followed the man and the boy until they turned the corner and were gone.
Pause.
She stood still. She kissed her baby. The baby was a girl.
Pause.
She kissed her.
Pause.
She listened to the baby’s heartbeat. The baby’s heart was beating.
The light in the room has darkened. The lamps are very bright.
REBECCA sits very still.
The baby was breathing.
Pause.
I held her to me. She was breathing. Her heart was beating.
DEVLIN goes to her. He stands over her and looks down at her.
He clenches his fist and holds it in front of her face. He puts his left hand behind her neck and grips it. He brings her head towards his fist. His fist touches her mouth.
DEVLIN
Kiss my fist.
She does not move.
He opens his hand and places the palm of his hand on her mouth.
She does not move.
DEVLIN
Speak. Say it. Say ‘Put your hand round my throat.’
She does not speak.
Ask me to put my hand round your throat.
She does not speak or move.
He puts his hand on her throat. He presses gently. Her head goes back.
They are still.
She speaks. There is an echo. His grip loosens.
REBECCA
They took us to the trains
ECHO
the trains
He takes his hand from her throat.
REBECCA
They were taking the babies away
ECHO
the babies away
Pause.
REBECCA
I took my baby and wrapped it in my shawl