He turns.
Oh hell …
He gets up. Exit COLIN.
After a long pause, VAL gets up. She goes over to the window and smashes her fists and arms through it. The sound of breaking glass prompts COLIN to re-enter.
Christ Almighty. Val. Oh God. (He crosses to her. Then, gently:) Now, let’s have a look, come on, put your hand over, we’ve got to stop the blood. Oh why love? (Looking round frantically for a bandage.) Where’s the plasters? Oh Val, have we got any bandages? (Opening and shutting drawers.) I knew we should have bought that first-aid kit when we saw it in Argos. (He takes off his jacket and shirt and proceeds to wrap the shirt around VAL’s arm.)
There, sorry, sorry, come on, we’ll have to get it seen to … Where are … Sid? Walter? (He exits to the kitchen.) Get off the table. What did you tell them to do, flood the place? (He re-enters with SID and WALTER.) Come on, you two get in the car. (He steers VAL with his arm.) Come on, love. Why? Oh why?
SID. Where are we going? Where are we going?
WALTER. Mummy Mummy.
Enter CLAIRE and JOYCE through the front door which COLIN has left open.
CLAIRE. Sorry, we did knock … oh what’s happened?
COLIN. At last. Thank God. Why didn’t you come earlier?
JOYCE. Val, what have you done? What’s she done to her arm, what the hell’s happened? Colin, what …
COLIN (nods to the window). She cut herself. Please could you two stay here and look after the boys.
JOYCE. I’ll come with you.
COLIN. Please.
CLAIRE. We’ll stay here, Mum. Colin, at least put your jacket on. Now, let’s have a look.
COLIN (feeling his bare chest). Oh God. (Putting on his jacket.) Don’t touch that, she’s losing blood.
CLAIRE (swiftly takes the sleeve off the shirt, redoes the bandage so it’s tighter). It’s not that bad, it will need stitches though, Val.
COLIN. Please I must get her to hospital.
JOYCE. You’re not going to let her stay in hospital, are you? Colin, answer me, are you?
COLIN. I’m not going to have her bleed to death on the carpet.
JOYCE. I’m coming with you.
CLAIRE. No, Mum.
COLIN. No. Stay here. (He propels VAL through the door. They exit.)
JOYCE (shouts after him). Don’t you dare let them do anything but sew the arm up.
SID. Mummy gone. (He starts to cry.)
WALTER. Daddy gone. (He starts to cry.)
CLAIRE. Only for a little while. They’ll be back soon. Come on, come here for a cuddle.
CLAIRE cuddles WALTER; JOYCE cuddles SID.
JOYCE (feeling SID’s feet). Their shoes and socks are wringing wet. Poor loves. (She gets up, finds a towel and dries their feet. She puts clean socks on them then stuffs the shoes with newspaper.)
CLAIRE. They’re almost asleep.
JOYCE. Did she try and slash her wrists?
CLAIRE. No, it was further up the arm. Physically it wasn’t bad.
JOYCE. But why?
CLAIRE. Mum. (Nodding towards the boys.) We must try and keep calm. I’ll take these two up and read them a story.
JOYCE. You’re right. I feel so useless.
CLAIRE. You can’t do anything until Colin gets back.
JOYCE. You see to them and I’ll try and do something to the window.
CLAIRE exits with SID and WALTER.
While JOYCE boards the window up, she talks to CLAIRE although CLAIRE can’t hear her.
I was in Woolworth’s the other day. You wouldn’t remember when nothing in there was over sixpence. It seemed like magic when I was a child. Until I was caught stealing a bar of chocolate and tasted nothing but humiliation. Mind, it’s all changed now, but what hasn’t? I don’t think they can have any store-rooms in Woolies, you know, because it seems that all the stock is on the shelves. Rows and rows of the same thing but some of them are still good value. Any rate, I was just comparing the price of the wrap and seal bags when but a few feet away this man went off his nut. I was going to say ‘off his trolley’ but you might have got confused with shopping trolley and thought I was going to have a dig at the way men don’t seem to be in control of the things, let alone what they buy. Do you know that most wives have to write the shopping list in order in accordance to how you go around the shop otherwise you can find a pile-up round the poultry. All it takes is for one of them to be a vegetarian and it needs the assistant manager and a pair of wire cutters to de-mesh them. Anyhow, that’s beside the point – this chap didn’t even have a basket. He was just stood there standing and he blew a gasket. Flipped. Shouting and screaming words what nobody could make out but sounded like something like ‘Alley Waly Gumbroil‘ and he started smashing his fist over and over the massive piles of soaps so there were bars of Lux, Fairy Toilet, Shield, Imperial Leather – you name it, flying all over the shop. Literally. It was quite a few moments before he was apprehended and, as he launched attack after attack into what was left of the display, so even the plastic price labels attached to the chrome racks started pinging from place to place. I caught myself thinking: let them punch soap all over the show, as long as they don’t hit their wives.
Not that any of you have ever been hit by a man, to my knowledge anyway. Colin is such a lamb, isn’t he? And it wasn’t so long ago that our Val thought God’s grand plan meant a Shreiber fitted kitchen. As for Lawrence, he was nothing like he is now. D’you remember he used to wear so many badges that when I saw him without them his shirt had so many perforations I nearly dunked him in a cup of boiling water. Yes, like a teabag it was. Oh, and in the winter he wore those silly loud jumpers with reindeer prancing all over them. Talk about migraine, I tell you, Claire, you was lucky to get away without a brain tumour. Not that I was a hundred per cent, to say the least, behind you leaving him like that, it must have been a real blow to his do-da. But well, before that, mind, he used to make quite an effort to get on with me. Clever that, because I know you’re not supposed to have favourites and I treat them all the same – you were always special to me. So he knew what he was doing when you first started going out together. My instinct is to say courting but you all cringe and say, ‘Aw Mum, no one says courting these days’. Well, my vocabulary has had a lot of new words prised into it over the years, and you have to be careful because there’s a lot of difference between ‘going out’ and ‘coming out’. I tell you sometimes, I get so tongue-tied I don’t know whether – but what’s that to do with anything. Nothing. Where was I? Oh yes, so he had me sussed out, as they say. Invited me to his bachelor pad for Sunday tea. He apologised for the state of it. Apparently there’d been a party the night before. It was a bit messy and he must have noticed that I was almost wearing myself out sitting still while the hoover lay dormant. So by way of distraction, he told me that someone had arrived with a bottle of sherry which had been made in South Africa and as a matter of principle he’d poured it down the sink. Myself, I couldn’t help thinking it was a pity Vim wasn’t made in South Africa. His family was worth a bob or two, I can tell you. Well, you could tell for yourself they went to the theatre practically every other week and that, but him, he had no time for it, turned his back and shunned the lot of them, and he was always raving on to me about authentic working-class culture – whatever that is when it’s at home. I’d supposed he meant the group of fire-eaters on stilts who blocked the pavement, outside the Town Hall, when Nalgo were on strike.
We are talking about a man who used to call coppers pigs, the Beak – right-wing scum, and the law – by that I mean the legal system the whole shebang – ‘a heap of shite’. But being who he is he can use it any way he wants because that’s what it’s there for and I should know, amount of times he told me.
Not that this turncoat soft-peddling didn’t eat at him, because it did. He took his contrary ideas and guilt and inflicted them on a therapist. Didn’t last long though. He told me, while I was still speaking to him that is, why he’d jacked it in.
‘Huh’, I said to him, I said, ‘Lawrence, it’s a fine to-do, in this day and age when the ultimate in humiliation for a grown man like yourself is when your therapist yawns at you’.
Enter CLAIRE, not having heard a word coherently.
CLAIRE (impatiently). Mum, can you keep the noise down. They’re asleep.
JOYCE. I’ll never understand what came over you. He wasn’t such a bad bloke. He might have had some weird ideas but then, let’s face it, he wasn’t the only one.
CLAIRE (angrily). For Christ’s sake don’t start all that up now!
Scene Nine
Friday morning. Staff room. Breaktime. ROGER eating a packet of crisps. Enter CLAIRE.
ROGER. Good morning, deputy éclaire, our matriarch’s mentor and minion.
CLAIRE. Mr Cunningham, as acting deputy head, I must remind you of your place which, were it not for the advantages awarded to the unfairer sex, would be down a lavatory pan.
ROGER. What a superb metaphor. Ms Anderson, one may venture even for you Milton has not lost his uses.
CLAIRE. Indeed he hasn’t, I sincerely hope you take after him. (She drops the book, The Complete Works of Milton, which ROGER has open on a table.) Go blind and wank yourself into oblivion.
ROGER. Fortunately, my paradise isn’t lost to a loudmouthed …
CLAIRE. Language, sir, language, we simply cannot tolerate your hot hyperboles in this school.
ROGER is stopped from shouting any further adjectives by MARION entering, followed by ANNETTE.
CLAIRE (about to walk past them, to ROGER). Have a nice day.
MARION. Claire, Claire, have you seen this? (Brandishing a copy of the school magazine.)
Enter LINDA.
CLAIRE (to MARION). No. (To LINDA:) Hello, Linda, how’s things?
LINDA (looking at MARION). Fine.
CLAIRE shows no interest in the magazine and ROGER takes it from MARION.
MARION. Liberal teaching methods are to blame. They can’t say I didn’t warn them.
LINDA. Don’t go overboard, Marion, it’s simply the agitation of one girl.
MARION. Girl? If you can call her a girl. I’m not aware of any pronouns for neuters. Actually, I supposed you’d be the best person to ask about that, Roger.
ROGER (looks up, offended). Just what do you mean by that?
MARION. Is there another pronoun other than he or she?
ROGER. ‘It’ – no man’s land.
MARION. Quite.
ROGER. Anyway, if you’ll excuse me. I can’t stand here all day discussing the ins and outs of hermaphrodites.
MARION. No, you can’t, Miss Grimble’s coming.
ROGER. Don’t get excited, Marion, she always makes that noise – it’s chronic bronchitis. (MARION looks confused. LINDA and CLAIRE act as though no one is in the room. A little louder; he continues for the sake of talking.) What do you call a shiny receptacle from which ale is poured from a great height? – Beer Tricks Thimble.
Enter BEA GRIMBLE with CYRIL in tow. She gives ROGER a withering look.
CYRIL (as they enter is muttering to BEA, who is totally oblivious of him). And rumour has it, when on the rugger field.
BEA. Please take a seat, I want a word with you all. Don’t worry, Miss Pollard is with the sixth form. This is a very serious matter. Ah, Mrs Anderson, would you sit here next to me. (MARION is forced to change places with CLAIRE.) Thank you, I’m sorry I’ve not had time to discuss this with you personally, Claire, but in view of the urgency of the matter, I’m sure you’ll understand. Now, have you all seen a copy of the school end-of-term magazine?
MARION. I have, Miss Grimble.
BEA. In view of the fact that I’ve forgotten my reading glasses amidst the fracas, would you care to read for us?
MARION (quickly). No, I would not. (A look from BEA.) I couldn’t, I couldn’t possibly. I mean its sentiment is completely beyond my comprehension.
BEA. Quite likely. Very well. (She looks at CLAIRE.)
CLAIRE (reluctantly). I’ll read it.
BEA. Thank you. (She hands them all a copy.) Back page.
CLAIRE. From here?
BEA. Yes. (She sighs.) It’s not really the sports fixtures that concern us today. (She nods to CLAIRE.) Thank you.
CLAIRE (reads). Women should never again have to apologise for loving each other. How natural is it to spend your life in service to a man? When I deny through silence I am only reinforcing my isolation. I am a lesbian and I am not alone.
Silence, during which CLAIRE does not look up.
BEA (almost sadly). I don’t think it’s too hard to nail down the author of that. There is, however, another piece in the third person. Perhaps we should hear that?
She nods to CLAIRE but CLAIRE passes the magazine to MARION who is left with little choice other than to read it.
MARION (reads). It is about time the education system recognised the hypocrisy it transmits while trying to be liberal in its purporting to care for the individual. Its liberalism is total reactionary rubbish and sexist crap. We are not allowed freedom of choice over our sexuality, which if it is different to that as suggested by the hierarchy of this establishment, is evil. We have a right to our identity and we are not going to be silenced by a smack in the gob from this fascist, poxy school.
ROGER (stifles a laugh). That’s told us.
BEA. You’ll be laughing on the other side of your face if I find the culprits, who obviously can’t string a sentence together to be in your English A level group. (Silence.) Yes, it renders me speechless, what do you make of it, Mrs Anderson?
CLAIRE. I agree, the syntax is foul.
BEA. Is that all you have to say?
CLAIRE. No. (Slight pause.) I mean … it’s dreadful, disgraceful, disgusting.
MARION. I don’t understand how it got there.
BEA. Someone or something obviously typed it on to the last stencil and put it back in the pile awaiting duplicating and collating. Although how they obtained the key will, I suppose, remain a mystery.
MARION. Ah, Miss Evans has been off and …
BEA. Miss Evans’s attendance or lack of it in this school is not the topic under discussion, that is a matter for this evening’s Board of Governors meeting. But this (Jabbing at the article with her finger.) business must on no account be allowed to get that far. Which is why we are thrashing it out now. Perhaps Mr Cunningham is the best person to enlighten us as to the precise, punctuation aside, meaning of the wording.
ROGER (studying the wording). Educational, i.e. learning.
BEA. Don’t try and be funny, Mr Cunningham. This is not a merry jape. I am quite aware of the connotations of ‘educational’, ‘hypocrisy’, ‘sexuality’ and ‘rubbish’. Neither do I need David Owen to point out the connection between ‘liberalism’, ‘reactionary’ and ‘fascism’. I am stumbling over poxy.
ROGER. Ah, it’s … the clap.
BEA. And what’s that when it’s at home, a new wave dance step?
ROGER. Venereal disease.
BEA. God help us all. Is that rife, as well? It would seem that this institution is nothing but a hotbed of perverted promiscuity.
CYRIL (thoughtfully, matter of factly). Rest assured, Beatrice, it is impossible for women to transmit syphilis to one another. The germ can only breed in the heat created by the friction of the erect penis in the vagina.
BEA (looks as though she might be sick). Spare us, please.
MARION (shocked). Cyril, I thought your degree was in physics.
CYRIL. I am qualified to teach biology, only I always considered it more of a woman’s subject.
BEA (recovered). Indeed. Thank you, Mr Barrett.
CYRIL. My blood pressure runs amok at the thought of teaching fifth form girls the ups and downs of menstrual cycles.
BEA (firmly, singsong). Thank you.
ROGER. On your bike, Cyril.
BEA (raising her voice). Mr Cunningham.
ROGER. Poxy, Miss Grimble, is used as an expletive, a swear word. Obviously
, the authors or authoresses do not hold the school in very high regard.
BEA. Obviously. (Slight pause.) Mrs Anderson came up with an excellent formula for negotiation but it has gone too far for us to put it into operation.
CYRIL. They must be helped in some way, surely.
MARION. I don’t know about that – it must be stamped out, this sort of thing breeds like wildfire.
BEA. What do you suggest?
MARION. For what?
BEA. For those who fly in the face of the fabric of society.
CLAIRE. I know it goes against …
MARION. It goes against everything decent people hold dear.
CLAIRE. Such as?
CYRIL. God and the family. To name but everything in two.
BEA. Not that the nuclear physics goes against God and the family, I don’t suppose, Mr Barrett?
ROGER. Never mind the Holy Trinity. Marion’s right, if this thing doesn’t get hushed up there’s no telling what will happen. It’s a real threat to the other girls.
LINDA (everyone including herself is shocked at this outburst). You think so? You really think so? You think the possibility so attractive to girls in this school, let alone society, that they will relinquish the security of friends and family? Are you really suggesting that the possibility is so viable that they, with nothing less than gay abandon, will shrug off all social pressures and become outcasts? (Stunned silence, then half-mumbled.) Although if they all did they wouldn’t be outcasts …
MARION. Which is why it mustn’t be allowed to get to that.
CYRIL. Oh God, we’ll have the papers round here, none of us can handle that.
ROGER. Why should we? This would never happen in a mixed school. I’ve always said it was unhealthy.
BEA. There is nothing unhealthy about girls failing, Mr Cunningham.
ROGER. That’s as may be, but you felt the need to appoint male staff.
BEA. On the contrary, it wasn’t me, it was the poxy Equal Opportunities Commission.
ROGER. Oh.
BEA. None of this is solving our dilemma. I want you all to send every girl in the school who could possibly be a (Slight pause.) whatever, if you follow my drift, to me.
Plays One Page 24