Keith Waterhouse - Collected Plays

ROGER: I can answer that question myself. Because you can’t keep away from the bugger.

ANGIE: Don’t be ridiculous. The opposite, in fact. I came here to tell him it was all over.

ROGER: But I thought it had been all over for months and bloody months!

ANGIE: So it has, but he wouldn’t take no for an answer.

ROGER: Why didn’t you just tell him to piss off?

ANGIE: Not my style. So when we came back from Venice and there was a message on my answering machine, I thought I’d better see him and get it over with.

ROGER: To say what?

ANGIE: That I’d been away with someone, someone I was very much in love with, someone I was very much involved with and didn’t want to lose — so would he please accept the situation and not ring me anymore.

ROGER: (Mollified.) Good. And what did he say to that?

ANGIE: He wished me luck.

ROGER: So he should. Then what did you say?

ANGIE: Roger… I told him I’d once been in love with him.

ROGER: (As a narrative aside.) I ask you to talk, Angie, but then you don’t know when to stop. (To ANGIE: dully.) Why did you want to tell him that?

ANGIE: Not for a very nice reason, I’m afraid. To gloat, if you must know. I wanted him to realize I didn’t need him anymore — that I had someone else now, someone who loved me back instead of just taking what love I had to give. Who cared about me and respected me and wanted to look after me.

ROGER: Thank you. That’s the best reference I’ll ever have. (He raises his glass.)

ANGIE: So can we put him behind us now, darling? No more inquests, investigations — no, not investigations…

ROGER: Interrogations.

ANGIE: (Now getting quite drunk.) Those. You’d make a good lawyer, darling, do you know that? Roger of the Bailey. I can just see you in your little wig. (Loudly.) Witness at the bar, do you deny that on the fourteenth –

ROGER: All right, Angie, we’ve got the message. Keep your voice down.

ANGIE: So you’re quite sure there’s nothing else you want me to tell you.

ROGER: (As a narrative aside.) Oh dear, you truly were asking for it, my love, weren’t you? (To ANGIE.) Not really.

ANGIE: Oh, come on, Roger, what kind of an answer’s that?

ROGER: Well, let’s say not at the moment.

ANGIE: I see. You want to keep something in reserve. Something you can drag up to pull the rug from under my feet just when I think we’re getting on with being happy at last.

ROGER: Now don’t start, Angie. Drink your champagne.

ANGIE: There’s something else you want to know from me so let’s get it over with.

ROGER: There’s a hundred things I want to know about you, Angie — a thousand things. It’s what being in love’s all about!

ANGIE: Is it? Is it? So it’s never going to end. And all the time I’m with you, and all the time we were in Venice and we’d just slept together and I’d ask you what you were thinking, there it was and there it is, festering away in your petty little mind — and you call it love!

ROGER: And what do you call it? You don’t know what love is, Angie. And as for secrets festering away in petty little minds –

ANGIE throws her glass of champagne in his face, collects her things, and walks out of the bar.

ROGER dabs the champagne from his face.

ROGER: (In the future narrative.) Yet however too far you went, my love, you never went too far for me. In the sixteen months we had, you exasperated, infuriated, offended, disappointed, depressed, alienated, saddened, wounded, even disgusted me, but you never bored me for a second.

ROGER crosses into:

ROGER’s home.

He steps out on to the patio carrying a drink. He is joined by JUDITH, also carrying a drink.

JUDITH: Have you said goodnight to Timothy?

ROGER: Yes. My God, he’s growing.

JUDITH: They do, you know — especially if you don’t set eyes on them from one week’s end to another. You won’t forget we’ve got Gunby coming to dinner?

ROGER: I thought you had dinner with him last week.

JUDITH: I did, in your absence, and now it’s our turn. It’s called socializing. And talking of which, why aren’t we invited to the Pecks’ on Wednesday?

ROGER: Charles and I don’t live in one another’s pockets. We don’t necessarily go to all his dos.

JUDITH: We go to this one, Roger. It’s his annual dinner party for Benito Benotti.

ROGER: Oh, that. I shouldn’t worry about it, darling. (To the absent ANGIE.) Yes , darling, I do call Judith darling too, darling. It’s an all-purpose term in marriage — sometimes even a term of abuse. (To JUDITH.) It’s not the star event of the social calendar, you know. You’re not missing out on having your name in Jennifer’s Diary.

JUDITH: I’m missing out on the bloody dinner party, Roger! I want you to go to Charles and insist that he invites us.

ROGER: No, I can’t do that, Judith.

JUDITH: Why not?

ROGER: (To the absent ANGIE.) Because I want next Wednesday evening to find me in bed with my mistress! (He shrugs to JUDITH.)

JUDITH: Has it crossed your mind to wonder why we’re being snubbed in this way?

ROGER: Nobody is being snubbed! Charles and I are partners — remember?

JUDITH: For how long?

She abruptly exits indoors.

ROGER, picking up his briefcase, wanders down to:

ROGER’s office/ANGIE’s flat.

The flat is at present unoccupied. In the office, ROGER moves to his desk.

ROGER: As it happens you couldn’t make it on Wednesday evening and that really was a snub. You wouldn’t tell me where you were going and I wondered why and where and with whom. (He picks up the phone and punches out Angie’s number.) You told me that my jealousy of Cheevers had more than once nearly finished us, Angie. That was before it did finish us.

The telephone gives an out-of-order signal.

(Replacing the receiver.) Unobtainable. Well, we know what that means, don’t we?

ANGIE enters the flat with some shopping and takes off her coat.

I went to see him, did that surprise you? At the Chelsea Auction Galleries. With a cock-and-bull story about an art deco desk I supposedly wanted to put up for sale. What do you think of that? Fifty-one years old and I was playing hooky from my office and weaving a web of stupid little lies just to catch a glimpse of my mistress’s former lover. What next?

CHARLES enters the office.

CHARLES: I know you’ve only had that bumf on Foster’s Fibre Flakes a couple of days, Roger, but they’re rather leaning on us. Any bright ideas?

ROGER: (Distracted.) As you say, it’s only just landed on my desk.

CHARLES: Mind if I have a glance? Inspiration might just strike.

ROGER: Help yourself.

He tosses over a folder which CHARLES picks up and studies during the following. ANGIE takes a half bottle of champagne from her shopping and opens it.

(As a narrative aside.) You never believed for a second, did you, that I wanted you to have had happy times and good relationships, that had I been able to give you fond memories, even of Cheevers, instead of empty ones, they would have been yours wrapped up in ribbon… I carry a sad mental picture of something you once told me: that sometimes when we couldn’t or wouldn’t see one another you’d go out to the wine shop and buy a half bottle of plonk champagne which you’d drink all alone, out of a tumbler, as a reminder of the times we’d had.

ANGIE pours herself a tumbler of champagne.