Complete Works, Volume IV Read Online Free PDF

that’s right, a black scarf, and a black sweater, and a skirt.
    ANNA Me?
    DEELEY And black stockings. Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten The Wayfarers Tavern? You might have forgotten the name but you must remember the pub. You were the darling of the saloon bar.
    ANNA I wasn’t rich, you know. I didn’t have money for alcohol.
    DEELEY You had escorts. You didn’t have to pay. You were looked after. I bought you a few drinks myself.
    ANNA You?
    DEELEY Sure.
    ANNA Never.
    DEELEY It’s the truth. I remember clearly.
    Pause
    ANNA You?
    DEELEY I’ve bought you drinks.
    Pause
    Twenty years ago . . . or so.
    ANNA You’re saying we’ve met before?
    DEELEY Of course we’ve met before.
    Pause
    We’ve talked before. In that pub, for example. In the corner. Luke didn’t like it much but we ignored him. Later we all went to a party. Someone’s flat, somewhere in Westbourne Grove. You sat on a very low sofa, I sat opposite and looked up your skirt. Your black stockings were very black because your thighs were so white. That’s something that’s all over now, of course, isn’t it, nothing like the same palpable profit in it now, it’s all over. But it was worthwhile then. It was worthwhile that night. I simply sat sipping my light ale and gazed . . . gazed up your skirt. You didn’t object, you found my gaze perfectly acceptable.
    ANNA I was aware of your gaze, was I?
    DEELEY There was a great argument going on, about China or something, or death, or China and death, I can’t remember which, but nobody but I had a thigh-kissing view, nobody but you had the thighs which kissed. And here you are. Same woman. Same thighs.
    Pause
    Yes. Then a friend of yours came in, a girl, a girl friend. She sat on the sofa with you, you both chatted and chuckled, sitting together, and I settled lower to gaze at you both, at both your thighs, squealing and hissing, you aware, she unaware, but then a great multitude of men surrounded me, and demanded my opinion about death, or about China, or whatever it was, and they would not let me be but bent down over me, so that what with their stinking breath and their broken teeth and the hair in their noses and China and death and their arses on the arms of my chair I was forced to get up and plunge my way through them, followed by them with ferocity, as if I were the cause of their argument, looking back through smoke, rushing to the table with the linoleum cover to look for one more full bottle of light ale, looking back through smoke, glimpsing two girls on the sofa, one of them you, heads close, whispering, no longer able to see anything, no longer able to see stocking or thigh, and then you were gone. I wandered over to the sofa. There was no one on it. I gazed at the indentations of four buttocks. Two of which were yours.
    Pause
    ANNA I’ve rarely heard a sadder story.
    DEELEY I agree.
    ANNA I’m terribly sorry.
    DEELEY That’s all right.
    Pause
    I never saw you again. You disappeared from the area. Perhaps you moved out.
    ANNA No. I didn’t.
    DEELEY I never saw you in The Wayfarers Tavern again. Where were you?
    ANNA Oh, at concerts, I should think, or the ballet.
    Silence
    Katey’s taking a long time over her bath.
    DEELEY Well, you know what she’s like when she gets in the bath.
    ANNA Yes.
    DEELEY Enjoys it. Takes a long time over it.
    ANNA She does, yes.
    DEELEY A hell of a long time. Luxuriates in it. Gives herself a great soaping all over.
    Pause
    Really soaps herself all over, and then washes the soap off, sud by sud. Meticulously. She’s both thorough and, I must say it, sensuous. Gives herself a comprehensive going over, and apart from everything else she does emerge as clean as a new pin. Don’t you think?
    ANNA Very clean.
    DEELEY Truly so. Not a speck. Not a tidemark. Shiny as a balloon.
    ANNA Yes, a kind of floating.
    DEELEY What?
    ANNA She floats from the bath. Like a dream. Unaware of anyone standing, with her towel, waiting for her, waiting to wrap it round her. Quite