Keith Waterhouse - Collected Plays

ANGIE appears from the Ladies’ room and takes up her glass. She is sparky but on the verge of getting stroppy.

ANGIE: That really was a lovely lunch, darling.

ROGER: Pity Hugh Kitchener was sitting across the room. I wouldn’t mind our being looked at like that if we’d done something to earn it.

ANGIE: Perhaps we look as if we have.

Their hands intertwine.

ROGER: I wish we had somewhere to go, Angie.

ANGIE: So do it.

ROGER: But haven’t we?

ANGIE: Your place or mine?

ROGER: No, seriously, Angie.

ANGIE: You mean a hotel?

ROGER: I mean your flat.

ANGIE: So my place?

ROGER: Is there any reason why not?

ANGIE: Why not your place?

ROGER: Come on, Angie!

ANGIE makes a great show of getting ready to leave.

ANGIE: To your place? When? Now? Fine! How shall we get there — tube or cab?

ROGER: Don’t be silly. The house isn’t unoccupied by day, as you must perfectly well know.

ANGIE: Neither is my flat. As you perfectly well now.

ROGER: You mean Belle?

ANGIE: Who else? I haven’t got a family tucked away, you know.

ROGER: But she must go out sometimes?

ANGIE: Yes, I’ve told you — at night.

ROGER: So if I made myself available in the evening, we could go round to your flat, is that what you’re saying?

ANGIE: Made yourself available? You sound as if you were putting time aside for a blood transfusion.

ROGER: Yes, I put that crudely. I’m sorry.

ANGIE: Besides, she isn’t out each and every night of the week. What if you made elaborate arrangements to see me and then she stayed in?

ROGER: I’d still take you to dinner.

ANGIE: (Softening.) I’d like that.

ROGER leaves ANGIE drinking champagne.

He steps back to the patio of his home where he helps JUDITH into her coat. JUDITH carries an overnight bag.

ROGER: So dinner I took you to, at –

ANGIE: Mr Chow’s?

ROGER: The Peking Experience. You ought to remember where we had our first dinner, Angie.

ANGIE: Does the place matter? It’s the occasion that matters.

ROGER: There was no occasion — not for me. It was an occasion for Judith — her first television assignment. (To JUDITH.) Good luck, darling, and don’t forget I’ll be out this evening, so don’t ring me, I’ll ring you, because I’ll be –

JUDITH: Entertaining a client? Rather a shop-soiled phrase, isn’t it? That’s why the Inland Revenue won’t let you set it against tax.

They kiss lightly.

JUDITH exits.

ROGER: What a shit one feels at times like these — and what was it all in aid of anyway?

He rejoins ANGIE in the champagne bar and refills her glass.

I think I should have told you this earlier, but Judith’s away from home tonight.

ANGIE: (Stiffening.) Oh?

ROGER: (As a narrative aside.) You’d arrived tense for dinner but you relaxed as what you thought was the Cinderella hour approached. Now you knew I wouldn’t turn into a pumpkin if I missed the last train you were tense again. (To ANGIE.) She’s making her television debut in Manchester.

ANGIE: So you must have known about this for some time.

ROGER: Yes. I didn’t want to make a formal announcement because it would have sounded premeditated.

ANGIE: Premeditated what?

ROGER: That on such and such an ordained evening we would go back to your flat.

ANGIE: And my views don’t count, I suppose? What if I don’t want you to come back?

ROGER: Don’t you?

ANGIE: Whether I do or not is beside the point, because Belle happens to be in bed –

ROGER: (As a narrative aside.) With what, or perhaps with whom, I forget.

ANGIE: The flu.

ROGER: No, it was the flu the second time Judith went up north. The first time it was her accursed curse. Not that it matters.

ANGIE: Why couldn’t you have told me this earlier?

ROGER: Why? Would you have had her moved into hospital?

ANGIE: I’m sorry Roger — I know you’re disappointed.

ROGER: But you’re not?

ANGIE: Yes, I am!

ROGER: Can I ask you something, Angie? Have you taken other people back to your flat?

ANGIE: I may have done. What’s that to do with us?

ROGER: How did you get rid of Belle?

ANGIE: I didn’t have to. They weren’t married men.

ROGER: Even if they were bigamists they don’t appear to have fallen victim to her diplomatic menstruation.

ANGIE: I wish you’d stop being so bitter and twisted, Roger. Don’t you understand it’s because of them I’m so reluctant to have you round?

ROGER: No, I don’t.

ANGIE: You don’t understand you’re special?

ROGER: What’s so special about being refused your bed? I think I’d prefer to be run-of-the-mill.

ANGIE: Now listen to me, darling. Yes, I have had other people round to the flat but they were silly, pointless, aimless flings that didn’t mean anything. I’m ashamed of them and I’m ashamed of my grotty flat and that’s why I don’t want you there.

ROGER: At all?

ANGIE: At all. Can’t you accept that I’m paying you a huge compliment?

ROGER: A compliment. Look. You meet all these other characters and they seemingly have no difficulty in getting back to your flat and sleeping with you. I have been battering at your door to no effect for two months now and you tell me it’s because I’m special!

ANGIE: I’m just afraid of us moving our relationship on to another plane.

ROGER: But you said you were in love with me.

ANGIE: I am, you know I am, but within that relationship.

ROGER: (As a narrative aside.) And I put you into a cab thinking: what a cock-teaser.

He helps ANGIE into her coat. They move out together, ROGER signalling for a taxi. He comes back without her and refills his glass.

I could have gone off you, Angie, in fact I did. To tell the truth the need to sleep with you wasn’t all that desperate — no one can remain in a state of mental erection for weeks on end. Was I falling out of love with you? Had I ever really been in love with you? The answer seemed to be that whatever I felt for you was like a plant that needed water. It had to grow or wither.

ANGIE rejoins him in the limbo area.

ROGER: Angie, I’m afraid I can’t see you on Friday. I have to go to Edinburgh.

ANGIE: Business?

ROGER: Penn’s Shortbread Products. They’re feeling neglected.

ANGIE: So am I.

ROGER: I haven’t gone yet. I shall miss you.

ANGIE: I’ll miss you too. Will you fly or go by train to Edinburgh?

ROGER: Fly.

ANGIE: I’ve never been in an aeroplane. Would you hold my hand very tightly if I came with you?

A hotel bedroom.

ROGER and ANGIE enter. He carries an overnight bag and briefcase, she has a cheap little cardboard suitcase.

ROGER: (As a narrative aside.) I remember your first words as you saw the foil-wrapped after-dinner mint on the pillow.

ANGIE: Oo, look — they’ve left us a contraceptive.

ROGER: Then you sat on the bed and bounced up and down experimentally. It was all a bit matter-of-fact for me. It was as if you were testing the equipment in a gymnasium.

ANGIE, taking a silk kimono out of her suitcase, goes into the bathroom.

ANGIE: I’ll just have a quick bath, darling, then I’m all yours.

ROGER: You screwed, and that’s the word for it, like a promiscuous college girl grimly ploughing her way through The Joy of Sex. I’d never encountered the generation gap in bed before — making love to you, at first was like being a parent at a pop concert, tapping his foot and enjoying himself but being ever so self-conscious about where he is and the company he’s in, and very, very careful not to make a fool of himself… You blithely and resolutely went from one manoeuvre to another, from one position to another, as if ticking them off in a catalogue. I became gloomier and gloomier at the realization of how little my sexual vocabulary overlapped with yours. Once, when I tried some modest innovation of my own, you said quite sharply –