KAY: I can. I’ve often felt like that.
MRS C: But why, dear, why? It isn’t sensible. If you’re having a party, you’re having a party.
KAY [earnestly]: Yes, it isn’t that. And it isn’t that you suddenly dislike the people. But you feel – at least I do, and I suppose that’s what father felt too – you feel, quite suddenly, that it isn’t real enough – and you want something to be real. Do you see, Mother?
MRS C: No I don’t, my dear. It sounds a little morbid to me. But your father could be quite morbid sometimes – you mightn’t think so, but he could – and I suppose you take after him.
KAY [very gravely]: Do you think that sometimes, in a mysterious sort of way, he knew?
MRS C [not too attentive to this]: Knew what, dear? Look at Hazel, doesn’t she look rather sweet? I can remember where I first wore those things. Absurd! Knew what?
KAY: Knew what was going to happen to him. You know, Alan said that some of the men he knew who were killed in the trenches seemed to know sometimes that they were going to be killed, as if a kind of shadow fell over them. Just as if – now and then – we could see round the corner – into the future.
MRS C [easily]: You have the most extraordinary ideas. You must try and put some of them into your book. Are you happy, darling?
KAY: Yes, Mother. Very happy.
MRS C: That’s all right then. I want you to have a lovely birthday. I feel we all can be happy again, now that the horrible war’s all over and people are sensible again, and Robin and Alan are quite safe. I forgot to ask – did Robin send you anything, Kay?
KAY: No. I didn’t expect him to.
MRS C: Oh – but that isn’t like Robin, you know, Kay. He’s a most generous boy, much too generous really. Now that may mean he thinks he’s coming home very soon.
[Enter ALAN with JOAN HELFORD, who is HAZEL’s friend and the same age, pretty and rather foolish.]
KAY: Alan, tell them we’re beginning – and it’s three syllables.
[ALAN goes.]
JOAN: I think you all look marvellous. I’m rotten at this, you know, Kay. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
KAY: Now then, Carol, you start. And remember, only say ‘Puss’ once. Don’t you two say it – only Carol. [ALAN returns. CAROL goes out – and there can be the sound of distant laughing and clapping.] Good old Carol. Now then – you two. [Almost pushes them off.] Now the next syllable is S. Y. So I thought it wouldn’t be cheating too badly if we called that ‘sy’. Y’know, Cockney – ‘I sy, Bert.’ So this is an East End scene. Madge, you’re the old mother.
MADGE [who has started putting on very droll shabby clothes]: Yes, I remembered.
ALAN: What am I? I forget.
KAY: You’re Bert. Just put something silly on. Is there anything here you can wear, Joan?
[During following dialogue, they all dress up.]
JOAN: I was in London last week, staying with my uncle, and we went to the theatre three times. We saw Tilly of Bloomsbury and Cinderella Man and Kissing Time. I liked Cinderella Man best – Owen Nares, y’know. I thought Robin was coming home soon.
KAY: He is.
JOAN: He’s an officer, isn’t he? You weren’t an officer, were you, Alan?
ALAN: No, I was a lance-corporal. One stripe, y’know. Nothing at all.
JOAN: Didn’t you want to be anything better than that?
ALAN: No.
KAY: Alan has no ambition at all. Have you, my pet?
ALAN [simply]: Not much.
JOAN: If I were a man, I’d want to be very important. What are you doing now, Alan? Somebody said you were at the Town Hall.
ALAN: I am. In the Rate Office. Just a clerk, y’know.
JOAN: Isn’t it dull?
ALAN: Yes.
KAY: Alan never minds being dull. I believe he has tremendous long adventures inside his head that nobody knows anything about.
JOAN: Hazel says you’ve started to write another novel, Kay. Have you?
KAY [rather curtly]: Yes.
JOAN: I don’t know how you can – I mean, I think I’d be all right once I’d started properly – but I can’t see how you start. What did you do with the last one?
KAY: Burnt it.
JOAN: Why?
KAY: It was putrid.
JOAN: But wasn’t that an awful waste of time?
KAY: Yes, I suppose so.
ALAN: Still, look at the time you and I waste, Joan.
JOAN: Oh – no – I’m always doing something. Even though I haven’t to go to the canteen any more, I’m always busy. [MADGE, who has withdrawn herself a little, now laughs.] Why do you laugh, Madge?
MADGE: Can’t a girl laugh?
JOAN [humbly]: You always did laugh at me, Madge. I suppose because I’m not clever, like you.
[HAZEL returns, letting in noise – laughing and clapping – from outside.]
HAZEL: Well, you can imagine what happened. Mother let herself go, and of course it became all Spanish. I don’t believe they’ll ever remember hearing ‘puss’ mentioned. What are you supposed to be, Joan?
JOAN [hopefully]: A sort of Coster girl.
HAZEL: You look a sort of general mess. Oh – [to KAY] Carol wants to do Mr Pennyman at the paper shop instead of a general for the third syllable.
KAY: How can she? If it’s soldiers drilling, you can’t have Mr Pennyman. Unless we make him another soldier – and get Gerald Thornton or somebody to be a general.
[CAROL returns, very hot and flushed, and begins taking off her old woman’s disguise.]
CAROL: Mother’s still on. Golly! – it’s baking being an old witch.
KAY: Do you insist on being Mr Pennyman in the third syllable?
CAROL [brightening up]: Oo – I’d forgotten that. Yes, please let me do Mr Pennyman, Kay – my lamb, my love, my precious –
KAY: All right. But he’ll have to be a soldier. Just joined up, you see.
[Enter MRS C very grand, flushed, triumphant. She is carrying a glass of claret cup.]
MRS C: Well – really – that was very silly – but they seemed to enjoy it, and that’s the great thing. I thought you were very good, Carol. [To KAY] Carol was sweet, Kay. Now don’t ask me to do any more of this, because really I mustn’t, especially if you want me to sing afterwards. So leave me out, Kay. [Begins to sip cup.]
KAY: All right. Now come on. [Begins shepherding her players, MADGE, ALAN, JOAN.]
JOAN: Honestly, Kay, I’ll be awful.
KAY: It doesn’t matter. You’ve nothing to do. Now then – Madge.
MADGE [loudly, in laborious imitation of Cockney mother]: Nah then, Bert. End yew, Dy-sy. Cem along or we’ll be lite. [Leads the way off, followed by other three.]
HAZEL: How on earth did you get that claret cup, Mother?
MRS C [complacently]: Got Gerald Thornton to hand it to me – and it rounded off my little scene nicely. I don’t want any more. Would you like it?
[HAZEL takes it, and sips while removing things. They are all removing things.]
CAROL: Mother, you weren’t going to be an actress, were you – just a singer?
MRS C: I don’t know what you mean by just a singer. I was a singer certainly. But I did some acting too. When the Newlingham Amateur Operatic first did Merrie England, I played Bess. And I’d had all you children then. You were only about two, Carol.
HAZEL: Mother, Joan did stay in London last week, and she went to three theatres.
MRS C: She has relatives there, and we haven’t. That makes a great difference.
HAZEL: Aren’t we ever going?
MRS C: Yes, of course. Perhaps Robin will take us – I mean, just you and me – when he comes back.
CAROL [solemnly]: It says in the paper this morning that We Must All Get On With Our Jobs. This Mere Rush For Amusement has gone on long enough now. There’s Work Waiting To Be Done.
HAZEL [indignantly]: A fat lot of rushing for amusement we’ve done, haven’t we? I think that’s frightfully unfair and idiotic. Just when we
might have some fun, after washing up in canteens and hospitals and queueing for foul food, with nobody about at all, they go and say we’ve had enough amusement and must get on with our jobs. What jobs?
CAROL: Rebuilding a shattered world. It said that too.
MRS C [half lightly, half not, to HAZEL]: Your job will be to find a very nice young man and marry him. And that oughtn’t to be difficult – for you.
CAROL [now getting into trousers to play Mr Pennyman]: Hurry up, Hazel, and then I can be a bridesmaid. I believe you’re my only chance. Kay says she won’t get married for ages, if ever, because her Writing – Her Work – must come first.
MRS C: That’s nonsense, my dear. When the proper young man comes along, she’ll forget about her writing.
CAROL: I don’t believe she will, Mother. And anyhow, she won’t have bridesmaids. And if Madge ever marries, I know it will be to some kind of Socialist in a tweed suit, who’ll insist on being married in a Register Office –
HAZEL: I’m not so sure about that. I’ve had my eye on Madge lately.
CAROL [now as Mr Pennyman]: And I’ve ’ad my eye on Lloyd George. An’ what for, Mish Conway? Bee-corsh yew can’t trusht that little Welshman. Yew watch ’im, that’sh all I shay –
MRS C: That’s very good, dear. You’re rather like Mr Worsnop – do you remember him – the cashier at the works? Every New Year’s Eve, your father used to bring Mr Worsnop here, after they’d done all the books at the office, and used to give him some port. And when I went in, Mr Worsnop always stood and held his glass like this [she holds glass close to herself in a rather cringing attitude] and said ‘My respects, Mrs Conway, my deepest respects.’ And I always wanted to laugh. He’s retired now, and gone to live in South Devon.
[After slight pause, MADGE, still in absurd old Costerwoman disguise, enters with GERALD THORNTON. He is in his early thirties, a solicitor and son of a solicitor, and is fairly tall and good-looking, and carefully dressed. He has a pleasant, man-of-the-world air, very consciously cultivated. MADGE is arguing hotly, with all the fiery slapdash of enthusiastic youth.]
MADGE: But what the miners want and ask for is simply nationalization. They say, if coal is as important as you say it is, then the mines shouldn’t be in the hands of private owners any longer. Nationalize them, they say. That’s the fairest thing.
GERALD: All right. But supposing we don’t want them nationalized. What then? Some of us have seen enough of Government mismanagement already.
MRS C: Quite so, Gerald. Everybody knows how ridiculous they were. Sending bags of sand to Egypt!
MADGE [hotly]: I don’t believe half those stories. Besides they had to improvise everything in a hurry. And anyhow it wasn’t a Socialist Government.
GERALD [mildly]: But you don’t know they’d be any better. They might be worse – less experience.
MADGE [same tone]: Oh – I know that experience! We’re always having that flung in our faces. When all that’s wanted is a little intelligence – and enthusiasm – and – and decency.
GERALD [to MRS C rather as one adult to another at children’s party]: I’ve been conscripted for the next scene. To be a general or something.
HAZEL: We haven’t fancy dress for you.
GERALD: Good!
MRS C: I really mustn’t neglect them any longer, must I? And most of them will be going soon. Then we can have a nice cosy little party of our own. [Goes out.]
CAROL [to GERALD]: Well, you must look different somehow, you know. You could turn your coat inside out.
GERALD: I don’t think that would be very effective.
CAROL [impatiently]: Wear an overcoat then. Oh – and – [Fishes out a large false moustache and gives it to him.] Put this on. That’s a very good one.
[GERALD takes and looks at it dubiously. JOAN rushes in, more animated now her ordeal is over.]
JOAN [excitedly, girlish]: Hazel, d’you know who’s here? You’ll never guess!
HAZEL: Who?
JOAN [ignoring this]: That awful little man who always stares at you – the one who followed us once all round the Park –
HAZEL: He’s not!
JOAN: He is, I tell you. I distinctly saw him, standing at the side, near the door.
GERALD: This sounds like my friend Beevers.
HAZEL: Do you mean to say the man you brought is that awful little man? Well, you’re the absolute limit, Gerald Thornton! He’s a dreadful little creature. Every time I go out, he’s somewhere about, staring and staring at me. And now you bring him here!
GERALD [not worried by this outburst]: Oh – he’s not so bad. He insisted on my bringing him, and your mother said it was all right. You shouldn’t be so devastating, Hazel.
JOAN [giggly]: I told you he must be mad about you, Hazel.
HAZEL [the haughty beauty now]: I swear I won’t speak to him. He just would butt in like this!
CAROL: Why shouldn’t he, poor little manny?
HAZEL: Shut up, Carol, you don’t know anything about him.
[Enter KAY and ALAN.]
KAY: That wasn’t much good. The Costers were a wash-out. Oh – that’s all right, Carol. Now you’re a general, Gerald, and the others are recruits. Hurry up, Alan, and put something different on. Gerald, you’re inspecting them – you know, make up something silly – and then say to one of them: ‘Look at your foot, my man.’ Anyhow, bring in ‘foot’.
GERALD: Have I only two recruits, Carol and Alan?
KAY: No, mother’s sending in another man. They aren’t guessing anything yet, but that’s simply because it’s all such a muddle. I don’t think I like charades as much as I used to do. Dad was marvellous at them. [To GERALD] He always did very fat men. You’d better be a fat general. And you can be fat, too, Alan.
[Piano can be heard playing softly off. As the men are stuffing cushions under coats, and JOAN and KAY and MADGE are finishing removing their last things, ERNEST BEEVERS enters slowly and shyly. He is a little man, about thirty, still socially shy and awkward, chiefly because his social background is rather lower in the scale than that of the CONWAYS, but there is a suggestion of growing force and self-confidence in him. He is obviously attracted towards the whole family, but completely fascinated by HAZEL.]
ERNEST [shyly, awkwardly]: Oh – er – Mrs Conway told me to come in here.
KAY: Yes, of course. You’ve to be one of the recruits in this next bit.
ERNEST: I’m – not much good – at this sort of thing – you know –
KAY: It doesn’t matter. Just be silly.
GERALD: Oh – Beevers – sorry! I’d better introduce you. [Carries off slightly awkward situation with determined light touch.] This – is Mr Ernest Beevers, a rather recent arrival in our – er – progressive city. Now all these are Conways, except this young lady – Miss Joan Helford –
ERNEST [seriously]: How d’you do?
JOAN [faintly giggly]: How d’you do?
GERALD: This is Kay, who decided to be twenty-one today so that we could have this party –
ERNEST: Many happy returns.
KAY [nicely]: Thank you.
GERALD: She’s the literary genius of this distinguished family. Over there is Madge, who’s been to Girton and will try to convert you to Socialism.
ERNEST: I’m afraid she won’t succeed.
GERALD: This strange-looking middle-aged person is young Carol –
CAROL [nicely]: Hello!
ERNEST [grateful for this, smiling]: Hello!
GERALD: Alan I think you’ve met already. [Teasing] Oh – and let me see – yes, this is Hazel. She creates such havoc that when the Leicesters were stationed here the Colonel wrote and asked her to stay indoors when they had route marches.
ERNEST [solemnly]: How d’you do?
HAZEL [crossly]: Don’t be idiotic, Gerald. [Very quickly to ERNEST] How d’you do?
[Faint giggle from JOAN.]
ALAN [to ERNEST]: You’d better do something funny to yourself. Is there anything here you’d like?
&
nbsp; [ERNEST pokes about in the things, while HAZEL looks disdainfully on and JOAN wants to giggle. ERNEST is very clumsy now.]
KAY: Carol and Alan, you start. You’re recruits. Carol can do bits of Mr Pennyman to fill in.
[CAROL, followed by ALAN, goes out. GERALD is waiting for BEEVERS. KAY goes out.]
JOAN: What did your mother say, Hazel, about removing?
HAZEL: Oh, of course, she won’t think of it. And she’s been offered five thousand pounds – five thousand – for this house!
ERNEST [the business man]: Tell her to take it. I’ll bet in ten years she couldn’t get two thousand. It’s only this temporary shortage that’s forced prices of property up. You’ll see ’em come down with a bang yet.
HAZEL [snubbing him]: But she adores being here, of course, and so it’s hopeless.
[ERNEST realizes he has been snubbed. He has now made a few ridiculous changes in his clothes. He looks hard at HAZEL, who will not return his look. JOAN still giggly.]
ERNEST [with dignity which ill assorts with his appearance]: If I spoke out of my turn, I’m sorry.
KAY [looking in]: Hurry up, Mr Beevers.
ERNEST [hurrying forward]: I’m no good at this, you know, Miss Conway, and it’s no use pretending I am –
[But she rushes him and GERALD off, and follows them. JOAN bursts into a peal of laughter.]
HAZEL [indignantly]: I don’t think it’s funny, Joan. I’m furious.
JOAN [between gurgles and gasps]: He – looked – so – silly.
[HAZEL begins laughing, too, and they laugh together, rocking round.]
HAZEL [hardly distinguishable]: Did you hear him? ‘If I spoke out of my turn, I’m sorry.’
JOAN [hardly distinguishable]: We ought to have said ‘Pleased to meet you,’ and then he’d have said ‘Granted.’
[KAY comes back, and looks rather severely at these two.]
KAY [severely]: I think you were rather beastly to that little man.
[They still laugh, and as she looks at them KAY begins to laugh too. They all laugh.]
HAZEL [coming to]: Oh – dear! Oh – dear! But that’s the little man I told you about, Kay, who always stared, and once followed us round.