The Oberon Anthology of Contemporary Irish Plays

by Thomas Conway

  A. SLATTERY: I came in one Sunday morning and she was still ‘asleep’. I cajoled her like I always do, then I realised that she really was asleep, she hadn’t been out to the shops, this was not part of the game. She was so tired; I had serious difficulty rousing her. She was cranky and off form, which was really not like her. After a week she suggested the doctor herself. She hates doctors and hospitals; the doctor said it was probably just a virus but while he had her there he’d give her the full overhaul, that’s when she found the lump.

  A. KINSELLA: My life did flash before my eyes. And it seemed very small. A small life, a small existence.

  A. SLATTERY: Breast cancer. (Moves to mark, downstage right.) I thought I had lost her when she was diagnosed. I had never felt so low. When Liam died, I was devastated, I lost my beautiful friend, my lovely husband. I had no idea how to pick up the pieces, or where to even find the pieces. I loved him dearly, I always will. But I was never in love with him; I know it’s a bit of a cliché but…what can you do? Now here I was faced with it again, but this time… I was furious with her for about a month, angrier than I had ever been. I couldn’t believe she would do this to me, get sick, that she might leave me here alone. I started playing this horrible, sick game in my head, I would navigate the house and imagine she was gone; I’d see the gaps in every room. I’d look around thinking…this is where she used to sit, this is where she threw her car keys every evening, this is where she scratched the paint on the banister getting a new headboard up the stairs.

  I would think of her in the past tense for an hour every day, it sounds crazy I know, but I had to see what it would feel like. I was pushing her away, and I did it at the worst possible time. She ended up comforting me. I don’t know what I’d do without her. She…

  A. KINSELLA: Had I done enough? Had I seen enough? Had I sat on the sidelines, or played a full match? It made me re-evaluate my life. The good, the bad, and the ugly.

  (Stands and moves to mark downstage left.)

  In the mid-Eighties ‘Ann’, not her real name, started interning in the gallery. An American student living and working in Ireland, she was ten years younger than me. She was funny, smart, athletic, and very obviously gay. She was like a breath of fresh air, full of American idealism. It was the Eighties, when American idealism was popular. I had sort of adopted an ‘eyes down, hands in your pockets’ policy, and her openness was infectious. She made me laugh, we’d have lunch together and on Wednesday evenings I’d have a drink in Peter’s with her and her friends. I felt alive, more alive than I had in ages, almost celebratory. Ann was flirtatious and charming, she knew I had a partner, and she didn’t care, in fact I think that was what she found most attractive. She was bold and irreverent. I fooled myself into believing we were just friends but, truth be told, I knew what she was doing, and I knew what I was doing. We had an affair that lasted about six months. There are few things in my life that I regret, that I am ashamed of, this is one of them.

  A. SLATTERY: I was collecting Alice from town one evening, it was pouring with rain and I wanted to surprise her with a lift. They walked out together, laughing, gesturing wildly, and then Ann brushed Alice’s cheek with her hand. I knew then. My mouth went dry, and I sat there unable to move. Alice passed by, unaware, and got the bus home.

  I was in shock, I was livid. How could she do this to me, to us? Ann was everything I wasn’t; I wondered if that was why Alice liked her. I drove to Sandymount and walked for hours, thinking and thinking. I knew I had to talk to her, confront her.

  ‘I saw you. How long? Do you love her?’

  Alice cried. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said, ‘six months,’ she said, and ‘no, I don’t love her.’ ‘But I love how she looks at me, I love that she likes who she is…that she likes who I am. You don’t Alice, you’re ashamed of yourself, and you’re ashamed of me. I’m not asking you to live differently, just to think differently.’ I was so hurt; she had never said this before.

  I have always been uncomfortable with anything too ‘overtly gay’. I used to deem it unnecessary; I thought that ‘people like that’ gave us all a bad name. I never stopped to think that we are all just responsible for ourselves, moreover that ‘people like that’ are a celebration. Kenneth Williams and Graham Norton used to make me cringe; now they annoy me simply because they’re annoying. I’m not ashamed any more, but I was then. It took a long time to work things out, to trust her again, to fix things, but we did.

  A. KINSELLA: We got through it, somehow. I was an absolute idiot.

  An obvious shift here, both move to downstage centre. A little look and touch, as if to say, ‘we got through that bit’, a connection.

  A. SLATTERY: Do we argue! That’s gas. Yes, we argue. Not as much as we used to, but we pick at small silly things. I’m terrible at recycling, which really annoys her, when I hear her cry…

  A. KINSELLA: How hard can it be…?

  A. SLATTERY: I know I’ve put the plastic in the wrong place. And what’s worse is it always makes me laugh…that she gets so upset.

  A. KINSELLA: I’m not big on birthdays. I always say I don’t want anything, just get me a card.

  She says I’m impossible to buy for but I always know she’ll get me something anyway. Five years ago she got me a lawn mower. A lawn mower…for my birthday. I think I sulked for a week. I would have preferred a watch.

  A. SLATTERY: In my defence, she was looking at them in Woodies.

  A. KINSELLA: She was looking at paintbrushes. I did not ‘surprise you’ with an extendable roller!

  A. SLATTERY: (Laughs.) Menopause, that was intense. Imagine two moody hairy women in one room, a recipe for disaster.

  They move the two chairs from the table to downstage centre, like two car seats.

  A. KINSELLA: I hate to be a passenger when Alice is driving.

  (Swap sides so A. KINSELLA is driver side).

  She makes me nauseous. Sorry Al, but you do.

  She can’t seem to maintain her speed; she’s constantly accelerating and decelerating, faster, slower. It drives me crazy…literally.

  She also drives way too close to the driver in front and it makes me really nervous. I keep saying (Both together.), ‘If he brakes it’s your fault.’

  She fiddles with the radio, she’s too hot, she’s too cold, window down, window up, she talks, and talks, and talks and I’m sitting there thinking, ‘we’re going to die, we’re going to die here on the Tallaght bypass!’ By the time we get where we’re going, I’m stressed and cross. I tend to do most of the driving.

  A. SLATTERY: We argue about this a lot, it’s not a real fight, it’s kind of jokey…but serious at the same time. Passive aggressive is the term I’d use. (Big inhale from A. KINSELLA.) I think her real problem is lack of control; she hates not being in charge. I think it’s being in the passenger seat that gets to her most, not my driving.

  A. KINSELLA: You can’t fake nausea Al.

  A. SLATTERY: I think it’s psychosomatic.

  A. KINSELLA: Which is brought on by stress…

  A. SLATTERY: The stress of not being in control…

  A. KINSELLA: The stress of sudden braking at eighty miles an hour.

  A. SLATTERY: Kilometres, see…you drive too fast.

  A. KINSELLA: (Both women pull the cushions from behind their backs.) There are ten cushions on our couch. Ten. They range from oversized to small, like undersized…too small to have any purpose at all. In order to sit on the couch, you have to remove at least seven of them.

  This drives me insane, totally insane.

  I just don’t see the point, don’t get me wrong, I’m not aesthetically dim. I know what looks good and what does not. Ten cushions on a couch look daft, but apparently I have no taste, so the cushions stay. We cannot go to bed at night if they are left on the floor; I think she would have an anxiety attack.

  A. SLATTERY: Alice has a painting of the ‘mother and child’. It’s a religious painting that she bought at a market in London years ago.

 
; A. KINSELLA: Fifteen pounds, haggled down from twenty.

  A. SLATTERY: It looks it. I had it reframed a few years ago; to try to make it less garish, but there is no saving it. It’s appalling. It has pride of place in our sitting room, and clashes with our couch. When I walk into the room I feel it mocking me. Alice talks to it just to drive me mad.

  A. KINSELLA: ‘Hello Mary. Are you still holding the baby, you must be exhausted? Why don’t you have a seat and put your feet up, but put the cushions back when you’re finished, you know what she’s like.’

  A. SLATTERY: (Trying not to smile.)

  Framing it cost me 180 euro, and I keep trying to move it to the upstairs landing.

  A. KINSELLA: (Discreetly shakes her head.)

  A. SLATTERY: She’s not religious, and it’s awfully ugly. I think she keeps it to annoy me.

  A. KINSELLA: I know she thinks I keep that picture just to annoy her, but it’s really not like that. I do love it, in all its tacky splendour, but I suppose I think of it as a totem, an anchor or link to another time and place.

  Alice Slattery showed me what it felt like to breathe, to stop. That it’s OK to stop and be still. She brings me a sense of calm and peace. I had never felt that before, I didn’t know it was possible, or that I deserved it.

  That picture brings me back, back to swinging London; back to the ‘me’ I was then, the girl who kissed Dusty Springfield at a party in an upstairs flat in Ealing.

  A. SLATTERY: Allegedly.

  A. KINSELLA: I did. It compounds all the choices I’ve made, because none of that compares to what I have now. None of it. I think Alice is gorgeous, I always have.

  A. SLATTERY: I worried. At the beginning I worried. Am I gay now, is that what I am? But I had been married, was it even possible? Are there rules, was I allowed to be gay? I didn’t feel ‘gay’, but I loved Alice, so what, did that make me? I prayed about it often. I prayed for answers. I never told Alice this, but sometimes I prayed for forgiveness. I thought I was weak, that I couldn’t resist this. Maybe feeling this kind of love, this kind of attraction was common enough. Perhaps acting on these feelings was the thing we needed to control? I was scared that we were going to hell.

  ‘Follow the way of love.’ Corinthians chapter 14 verse 1. I’ve made peace with myself. I know God loves me, as I am.

  A. KINSELLA: For me, the shift in our relationship happened that year after my mother died. Alice was a true friend, so supportive. We spent loads of time together and over the year became closer and closer. Liam was supportive too, in his own quiet way. I spent a lot of time in their house, sitting at their table. He always welcomed me and never made me feel like I was in the way.

  Liam was such a lovely, lovely man. I couldn’t figure out why I disliked him so much.

  One evening we were sitting up late listening to The Temptations, she was singing along and looking at me, everything in me wanted to kiss her, to hold her close and dance with her. Liam had gone to bed earlier, as he left he kissed her on the lips and I had to turn away I was blushing so badly.

  ‘The Dutchman’ by Makem and Clancy fades up slowly on onstage speaker. This is obviously one of Liam’s songs; both ALICEs acknowledge it subtly.

  A. SLATTERY: My maiden name is Alice Connelly; I married Liam Slattery in 1970.

  I had wanted to stay in that night but Mary dragged me along to a dance organizing committee meeting. I was reading Wuthering Heights, and wanted to stay put, I was quite shy back then, Mary was mad, sure where would she be got! When we arrived in the hall we were swallowed up by a boisterous crowd, Mary got stuck straight in and was put on ‘decorations’; I was put firmly in the background on ‘sandwiches’.

  Ham and cheese, and egg mayonnaise.

  Liam was the other lost soul on sambos. He entered the kitchen looking shell-shocked and vaguely panicked; he blushed when I spoke to him.

  I put him on egg mayonnaise as the smell was turning my tummy, and the onion was making me cry. We courted;

  I suppose that is the word you would use, for a few years after that. It’s difficult to explain my relationship with Liam; I’m always terrified to sound dismissive of it, of him. I loved him. I didn’t realise at the time that I was operating at half speed, that life is supposed to be faster and more passion filled. I thought that this is what love is supposed to be, sure how would I have known? He died of a massive heart attack, aged 31. That was fairly unheard of back then. I have a lot of guilt when I think about Liam, I feel I let him down, that I never loved him in the way that he loved me. He had a beautiful soul, and was a beautiful friend. That’s all I have to say about that.

  Shift, A. KINSELLA squeezes A. SLATTERY’s hand and A. SLATTERY gets up to put on a record…and to move off the difficult topic.

  A. KINSELLA: We always have music on in our house. Motown music is a favourite. I love it and so does Alice. I used to send records home from London to Mary and the boys, and Al used to write to me and tell me which was her favourite, she loved ‘Forever Came Today’ by Diana Ross and the Supremes. We saw Stevie Wonder last year, I was totally overwhelmed.

  We listen to Stevie, The Temptations, The Supremes, Gladys Knight… Most meals are prepared on ‘the midnight train to Georgia’.

  Alice does most of the cooking and I love to watch her. There is something about how she moves in that space, her control and command that I find compelling and very attractive. She chops in time to the Pips!

  She has great patience; I always rush and end up with lumps and under-cooked food. I’m more of a lunchtime cook, sandwiches, salads, soups…that kind of thing. She cooks; I do spiders, hoovering, and laundry. The laundry is a necessity as she refuses to separate colours and whites. I could wallpaper the house with pink and grey colour catchers.

  Marvin gaye, ‘Sexual Healing’, is faded in, and this next section is a pre-recorded audio. Presumably because neither ALICE would agree to do it live. Both ALICEs look terrified, nervous and giddy. They shoot glances at each other, and try to contain the nervous laugh that is close to the surface. They both pick up books/newspapers, sit at the table and hide behind them. It is clear that these props are only used to give both women something to do while this uncomfortable section is played. Their discomfort is still obvious from behind their papers; we hear them have a ‘sneaky’ whisper. There is a great sense of giddy fun, giddy nerves, and even a little flirting in the audio.

  A. SLATTERY: (Laughing and grimacing.) I thought you said we wouldn’t do this till next week?

  Oh dear lord, right so, go on. You start Alice.

  A. KINSELLA: (Laughing incredulously.) You start! I’ll be in the kitchen. Opening more wine.

  A. SLATTERY: You will in your eye. Sit down there.

  A. KINSELLA: I’m just getting more wine.

  A. SLATTERY: Are you now?

  A. KINSELLA: Well…

  A. SLATTERY: Well?

  A. KINSELLA: Well, yes. Our first…time.

  A. SLATTERY: It was arranged, like we had talked about it.

  A. KINSELLA: No we didn’t!

  A. SLATTERY: Not talked about that, but we talked about the arrangements.

  A. KINSELLA: Ahh, yes, Al is a planner.

  A. SLATTERY: Well somebody had to take charge.

  A. KINSELLA: I was invited to dinner.

  A. SLATTERY: Dinner.

  A. KINSELLA: ‘Civilized’.

  A. SLATTERY: I didn’t call it civilized.

  A. KINSELLA: Yes you did, you invited me over for a ‘civilized dinner’…

  A. SLATTERY: Oh God, did I say that?

  A. KINSELLA: A civilized dinner, and I was to stay the night.

  A. SLATTERY: I was petrified.

  A. KINSELLA: You were drunk!

  A. SLATTERY: I was not drunk!

  A. KINSELLA: Well I was. Not ‘drunk’ drunk, but ‘calm the nerves drunk’. I had somehow managed to get my hands on a bottle of…what was that horrible wine Al?

  A. SLATTERY: God knows.

  A. KINSELLA: Ahh,
you know it… Blue Nun, that was it.

  A. SLATTERY: Oh yes, that was it, in the dark bottle.

  A. KINSELLA: We struggled through it over dinner. It was horrible, nobody drank wine at the time, but I was trying to impress. I was petrified too.

  A. SLATTERY: I made quiche lorraine. I was also trying to impress, which was ridiculous, I had been cooking for Alice for years. I was flustered all day; I burned the first pastry base I made.

  A. KINSELLA: She had made Victoria sponge-cake for dessert. My favourite.

  A. SLATTERY: I know, it’s hilarious now when I think about the whole thing.

  A. KINSELLA: Ahh Alice, it’s sweet.

  A. SLATTERY: I kept telling myself to stop panicking, that nothing had to happen if we didn’t want it to. It’s difficult, if you have been friends before lovers.

  A. KINSELLA: Yes, like, you already have an intimate relationship anyway…

  A. SLATTERY: And you have to change those old dynamics.

  A. KINSELLA: Well, you want to change those dynamics.

  A. SLATTERY: I just keep thinking that you had done this before, I was so green. I hadn’t a clue.

  A. KINSELLA: But I had no experience with men, I didn’t really know what I was up against.

  A. SLATTERY: God bless poor Liam, but you really shouldn’t have worried.

  A. KINSELLA: Anyway…

  A. SLATTERY: Anyway…

  A. KINSELLA: The time came, for bed.

  A. SLATTERY: We had been talking for hours…

  A. KINSELLA: We had been kissing for hours…

  A. SLATTERY: Alice!

  A. KINSELLA: Well, we had.

  A. SLATTERY: Don’t be so graphic

  A. KINSELLA: (Laughing.) I would hardly call that graphic. Considering the subject.