MARK. Oh, God!
CAROLINE. She really looks quite sweet, you know. It’ll really be such fun for you to meet her again after all these years, won’t it?
MARK. Caroline, you wicked, wicked woman. I give in. Unconditional sur render. Sylvia now goes the way of Mark Wright –
CAROLINE. Well, darling, in a way I suppose that’s only just, isn’t it – seeing that up to now it’s been Mark Wright that’s always gone the way of Sylvia.
OSCAR comes back with his overcoat on, and carrying MARK’s.
All right, all right, Oscar, we’re coming. Don’t look so dejected, dear. You’ll like her very much, I know, when you meet her. A very sweet and charming old lady.
She smiles at him. After a pause he smiles back. She goes out.
OSCAR (as he helps MARK on with his overcoat). What does it feel like to grow from seventeen to sixty-four in five minutes? Having your cake and eat ing it, eh? (Chuckles.)
MARK. Well – all I can say is this. I have jolly well had my cake and I have jolly well eaten it – and that’s more than can jolly well be said for most people, including yourself, so yah!
OSCAR. A little prep school, wasn’t it, for an ambassador?
MARK. That wasn’t an ambassador speaking. That was the last recorded ut terance of Mr Mark Wright. (Looking round room.) Pity. It was fun. Oh, well, never say die, I suppose.
They move towards doors. OSCAR turns off lights.
Come on, Oscar.
They go out into the hall together.
Curtain.
The End.
DUOLOGUE
Duologue was first performed as All On Her Own on BBC2, on 25 September 1968, with the following cast:
ROSEMARY
Margaret Leighton
JOAN
Nora Gordon
Producer
Hal Burton
Designer
Stephan Paczai
Duologue was first performed on stage as All On Her Own at the Overground Theatre, Kingston, Surrey, in October 1974, with the following cast:
ROSEMARY
Margaret Stallard
Director
Maria Riccio Bryce
Duologue was first performed at the King’s Head Theatre, London, in a double bill with The Browning Version, on 21 February 1976, with the following cast:
ROSEMARY HODGE
Barbara Jefford
Producer
Stewart Trotter
Designer
Geoff Stephens
Characters
ROSEMARY HODGE
Setting
Time: The present. Towards midnight.
Place: A house in Hampstead, London.
The stage is in darkness. There is the sound of a car drawing up, the engine continuing to tick over.
ROSEMARY (unseen).
Thank you so much. I do hope I didn’t take you too far out of your way… Yes, it is rather a nice house, I have to admit. No, a little earlier. William and Mary. Far too big, of course, for these days. My late husband chose it. He was an architect, you see, and fell in love with it. Are you quite sure I can’t tempt you inside for a drink? It’s still quite early. Oh, is it as late as that?I quite understand. See you at the Joynson-Smythes’ on Thursday, then. Goodnight. (Calling again.) Oh, thank you for the book. My favourite subject. I can’t wait to read it.
The car drives away. Silence. Lights are suddenly switched on in an empty room which, although we may only see part of it, is plainly a large ‘salon’, decorated carefully according to the period. Visible to us and necessary for the action is an armchair, a sofa centre-stage, a fireplace on which is an antique pendulum clock, and a door through which ROSEMARY has just entered. She is carrying a book which, if we can make out its title, is called Guilt and the Human Psyche: A Study of Contemporary Literature. She puts the book down by an armchair and pours herself a fairly hefty drink. Then she sits with it, puts it down on a table after a thirsty gulp, and picks up the book, riffling its pages quickly before throwing it down impatiently and picking up another, plainly a Crime Club selection. This too she puts down as she takes another gulp of her drink, and then stares at the sofa for a long time.
What time did you die?
She has spoken conversationally, as if to a person sitting close to her in the room.
Gregory, what time did you die? Wasn’t it about now? The police said you’d been dead between eight and nine hours, and it was eight in the morning Mrs Avon found you over there, on that sofa.
She stares at the sofa which is very tidy and clean, not looking in the least as though someone had once been found dead on it.
Or just before. Yes, it must have been before, because when she called me down the clock was striking. It’s one of those silly things you remember. So it must have been about now you died.
The clock gently and musically strikes the half-hour.
A woman at a party I’ve just been to told me quite seriously that she talks to her husband every night at exactly the hour he died. He sends her long messages on a Ouija board or something. Well, I haven’t got a Ouija board, but I’m talking to you Gregory, and at near enough the time you died. You might just answer, you never know, and then I’ll have a story to tell at a party, too. God, the party I’ve just been to. How you’d have hated it. Hated it. A young man reading a paper on Kafka and a discussion afterwards. You wouldn’t even have known who Kafka was, would you?
(In a warm, broad North Country accent.) Kafka? Is that a new government department, love?… Oh a writer, was he? Fancy.
(In her own voice.) You’d have tried to steal off home before the discussion, and I wouldn’t have let you, and you’d have gone off quietly to a corner of the room and got yourself quietly whistled. No, that wasn’t your word.
She gets up and pours herself another drink.
Gregory, what was your word?
Silence.
Something revolting. Yes. You’d have got yourself quietly drunk and wouldn’t have noticed my triumph in the discussion when I said to this young man: ‘You see, Mr Whosit, Kafka strikes no chord on my piano. I’m afraid I don’t believe in nameless fears. I believe that all fears can be named and once named can be exorcised.’ Rather good. It got applause. Nice if it had been true.
She goes back to her seat.
‘Are you sure you can name all your fears, Mrs Hodge?’… This was the hostess… ‘Surely when you’re alone at night in that great house of yours, Mrs Hodge, when your boys are away at school, you must sometimes have disquieting thoughts? I mean lonely widows usually – ’
(Sharply.) ‘Loneliness is a defeat, Mrs Ponsonby. I have far too many things to occupy my mind ever to feel lonely. I despise loneliness. I despise middle-aged women who talk to themselves at dead of night.’
She takes a long drink.
But I’m not talking to myself. I’m talking to you, Gregory, aren’t I? Talking to a dead you.
She laughs.
Well, talking to a live you wasn’t very different. It was still talking to myself. I hope you didn’t hear that because it was rude and I was never rude to you in all our married life, was I? Unfailingly polite – wasn’t it ‘unfailingly’ you used to say, or ‘invariably’?… No. ‘Unfailingly’. Poor Gregory – how you hated that, didn’t you? How you longed for just one honest, vulgar, hammer-and-tongs, husband-and-wifely flamer! But I never gave it to you, did I? I was brought up to be polite, you see – unfailingly polite. Was that so wrong?
(Answering herself.) Yes, it was. It was pretty damn bloody!
(Surprised.) Do you know – talking to you is rather good for me, Gregory. I should do it more often. It might even make me honest.
She takes another sip of her drink, then again looks over at the sofa.
I called you an architect again tonight, Gregory. I even said it was you who chose this house. That’s a laugh considering how you hated it. I call you an architect all the time, now that you’re no longer there to deny it.
(In Gregory’s North C
ountry accent.) Why do you call me what I never was, Rosemary, and never could have been? You make me feel as if I’d wasted all my life. I was a builder and proud of it. I despise bloody architects. They’re always so busy concealing lavatory pipes they forget they’ve got to flush.
(In her own voice.) Yes. You beat me on that, Gregory. The only real battle I suppose you ever won. To stop you talking about lavatories all over Hampstead, and making people think I was married to a plumber, we settled on ‘builder’. Well, ‘building contractor’. It sounded better.
She goes to get another drink.
All right. I’m being honest with you, Gregory. Now you be honest with me.
Drink in hand, she stands over the sofa looking down at it.
Tell me if the police and the coroner and the insurance people were right when they said it was a drunken accident? Or if I’m right now when I say you killed yourself?
Silence. ROSEMARY, as if consciously committing a blasphemous act, stretches herself out on the sofa.
(In his accent.) But Rosemary, darling, why should I kill myself? I had everything to live for, hadn’t I? I’d just sold my business in Huddersfield for a lot of money, and bought a beautiful house in Hampstead, and for the first time in my life could enjoy all the ease and comfort of a charming, civilised, cultured retirement in London, with my charming, civilised, cultured wife beside me, and my two charming, civilised, cultured sons at Eton. And my wife is still quite young, you know, as wives go, and still quite attractive in her way – well, I find her so anyway, but I suppose you’d say I was prejudiced about that and always have been. Oh, yes. I was a lucky man when I was alive. There’s no doubt about it. Why on earth should I have killed myself?
She gets up from the sofa and goes back to her chair. (In her own voice.) If I answered that for you, Gregory, would you still tell me whether you did?
After a pause.
Of course you wouldn’t.
(In Gregory’s voice.) But all that happened that night, Rosemary darling, was that after we had that little tiff about whether I couldn’t go out on the town with Alf Fairlie from the rugger club instead of going with you to the ballet – which I never did fancy very much, as you know – along with the Fergusons who always treated me like some kind of nit who’d married a mile above myself. Not the only ones to do that, down here in Hampstead, come to that, which doesn’t always seem to put you out too much, Rosemary love – be honest now, does it? Is that why we’re in Hampstead? Is it – to show me my place?
(Stridently, in her own voice.) On, my God! That wasn’t me. I’m not as honest as that, am I? Gregory, that must have been you! Gregory, are you in this room?
(Looking around anxiously.) Are you in this room, Gregory?
(More loudly.) Are you?
There is no answer and no sign. ROSEMARY swallows her drink and pours another.
Let’s try again!
(In North Country accent again.) Well, we had this little argiebargie, love – remember? And afterwards, you went up to bed – never a cross word, mind you – impeccably polite as.
(In her own voice, excitement mounting.) It was ‘impeccably’, not ‘unfailingly’ or ‘invariably’. No, it wasn’t – it wasn’t – but it was just then. Gregory, you are here! You are, aren’t you? You’re here, with me, in this room?
Again there is no answer and no sign.
(Controlling herself.) Go on. Go on, Gregory!
She begins to speak again, with a conscious imitation of his accent, carefully contrived at first – as in the two previous ‘Gregory’ speeches – and only later does her voice quite suddenly seem to become a spontaneous expression of a living personality.
All right, Rosemary darling, it was like this. You went up to bed, see, impeccably polite.
(In her own voice.) That was me that time, not you!
(In his voice.) … as always, and it was early still – not more than nine o’clock or thereabouts, and so I’m afraid, love, I got myself at that decanter that you’re holding now.
(Very gently.) Going my way, are you, love?
ROSEMARY slams the decanter down as if she had hardly known she had it in her hand.
Careful of the whiskey, love. It’s bad stuff for widows living on their own. You had two before you went to the party. Not many there, I shouldn’t think, knowing those parties – had Algerian burgundy, I expect – but you probably sneaked yourself an extra glass or so, shouldn’t be surprised. And now three since eleven twenty-five.
ROSEMARY pours some of her drink back into the decanter.
That’s better, Rosemary darling. Can’t be too careful, I always say. Look what happened to me that night.
ROSEMARY, with an effort at control, pours water into her drink and then, as if shrugging off Gregory’s presence, deliberately adds to it from the decanter.
(Still in Gregory’s voice.) Think it’s not me talking to you? Think it’s just you talking to yourself?
(In her own voice.) I know it’s just me talking to myself – in a bad Huddersfield accent.
(In his voice.) I didn’t talk in a Huddersfield accent, love. I was born in Newcastle.
(Sharply, in her own voice.) Did I know that? Yes, of course, I must have.
(Controlled.) All right, Gregory. What happened to you that night? Tell me.
There is a pause, as if she really were expecting a reply. Then, she laughs.
Of course! The game is – I begin and then you take over.
(In his voice.) Well, Rosemary darling, you’d gone to bed, as I told you, and I got at the decanter and got myself fairly whistled.
(In her own voice.) No, ‘whoozled’. That was your word. You got yourself ‘whoozled’.
(Unconsciously, in his voice.) Aren’t you going to say ‘I wish you wouldn’t use that awful expression, Gregory! If you mean ‘drunk’, why don’t you say ‘drunk’?
(In her own voice, now stiff with fear.) Because you weren’t drunk. When you came up to my room you were quite sober. If you hadn’t been, I’d have smelled it on your breath. I’d had enough experience of it these last fifteen years.
(In his voice.) But not much these last ten years, eh, love? Not from very close. And not at all that night.
(In her voice.) You said you wanted to sleep down here. And I told you to please yourself.
(In his voice.) Aye, you did. And I pleased myself. It was then, if you want to know, that I got myself really whoozled. Boy, did I get whoozled!
(After a pause; in her own voice.) You expected to come to bed?
(In his voice.) Not expected. Hoped, you might say. I’d say I was sorry, hadn’t I?
ROSEMARY nods.
And it was a Friday night, after all. I know it wasn’t back at Huddersfield, not working on Saturday and all – not working any bloody day down here! And I know things like that had, well – lapsed a bit lately between us – but, well, it’s always a good way to make-up a quarrel, isn’t it?
ROSEMARY nods again.
Don’t cry, love. There’s no need for that now. I told you, I didn’t expect. I only hoped.
(After a long pause; in her own voice.) What about those pills?
(In his voice.) Well, this sofa isn’t much of a place to sleep on, you know. A man my size.
ROSEMARY’s gaze is fixed on the sofa.
Oh, very aesthetical, and quite the rage in North London, I don’t doubt, but not too comfy for a man in a bit of a state. Whoozled, I know, but still in quite a state what with one thing and another. So I went up to the bathroom –
The immediate impression is that ROSEMARY is listening intently, although of course she continues to speak.
– and I found that bottle of pills that you use. Nembutal or some such name. Little yellow things. And I gave myself enough to make myself sleep – just two or three .
(Interrupting herself; quietly.) Six.
(After a pause; in his voice.) Was it six? I told you I was whoozled, didn’t I? Well, doesn’t that show it was an accident, love? I me
an, if I’d wanted to kill myself I’d have taken sixteen, wouldn’t I?
There is a pause. Then ROSEMARY finishes her drink and shrugs hopelessly.
(In her own voice.) Not if you wanted me to think it was an accident. And to let me have the money from the insurance.
(With a sudden access of real grief.) Oh, my God, do you think that money could make up for you? Oh, you bloody, bloody fool!
A moment.
But how were you to know?
She goes to replenish her drink.
Yes! Another whiskey. It’ll be the last. Oh, Gregory, why did you do it? It’s silly to ask you that, isn’t it? I know why you did it – if you did it. Did you? No, what’s the point! It’ll only be my own brain answering for you again, and my brain will go on thinking no, and believing yes – yes and no, no and – until the end of time.
After taking a gulp of her drink.
And when will that be, Gregory? Are you allowed to know these things? And would you tell me if you were?
A moment.
No, you’d never say anything to hurt me, would you?
She looks round the room in silence for a moment.
It doesn’t matter. Yes, I’m lonely, Gregory, and I do miss you. Quite terribly I miss you. Does that surprise you? I expect it does. It certainly surprised me.
She finishes her drink.
So you had everything to live for, did you? Your work, which you loved, finished by me. All your friends lost, and your life uprooted – by me. Your children, whom you loved, and who could have loved you, made to despise you – by me. And a wife – ‘unfailingly polite’ – who only knew she loved you when you were dead. And whom you loved and went on loving in spite of – I can say it. Oh yes, I’m brave enough! In spite of her driving you to your death.
(Raising her voice for the first time.) I did, Gregory, didn’t I? I want the real truth now, and I’m not going to answer for you any longer through my brain and with my voice! You’ll have to find some other way. Open a door, break a window, upset a table! Make some sign! But do something, and tell me the real truth! Did I kill you?
Who is Sylvia? and Duologue Page 15