Complete Works, Volume IV Read Online Free PDF Page B

absorbed.
    Pause
    Until the towel is placed on her shoulders.
    Pause
    DEELEY Of course she’s so totally incompetent at drying herself properly, did you find that? She gives herself a really good scrub, but can she with the same efficiency give herself an equally good rub? I have found, in my experience of her, that this is not in fact the case. You’ll always find a few odd unexpected unwanted cheeky globules dripping about.
    ANNA Why don’t you dry her yourself?
    DEELEY Would you recommend that?
    ANNA You’d do it properly.
    DEELEY In her bath towel?
    ANNA How out?
    DEELEY How out?
    ANNA How could you dry her out? Out of her bath towel?
    DEELEY I don’t know.
    ANNA Well, dry her yourself, in her bath toweL
    Pause
    DEELEY Why don’t you dry her in her bath towel?
    ANNA Me?
    DEELEY You’d do it properly.
    ANNA No, no.
    DEELEY Surely? I mean, you’re a woman, you know how and where and in what density moisture collects on women’s bodies.
    ANNA No two women are the same.
    DEELEY Well, that’s true enough.
    Pause
    I’ve got a brilliant idea. Why don’t we do it with powder?
    ANNA Is that a brilliant idea?
    DEELEY Isn’t it?
    ANNA It’s quite common to powder yourself after a bath.
    DEELEY It’s quite common to powder yourself after a bath but it’s quite uncommon to be powdered. Or is it? It’s not common where I come from, I can tell you. My mother would have a fit.
    Pause
    Listen. I’ll tell you what. I’ll do it. I’ll do the whole lot. The towel and the powder. After all, I am her husband. But you can supervise the whole thing. And give me some hot tips while you’re at it. That’ll kill two birds with one stone.
    Pause
    ( To himself. ) Christ.
    He looks at her slowly.
    You must be about forty, I should think, by now.
    Pause
    If I walked into The Wayfarers Tavern now, and saw you sitting in the corner, I wouldn’t recognize you.
    The bathroom door opens. Kate comes into the bedroom. She wears a bathrobe.
    She smiles at Deeley and Anna.
    KATE ( With pleasure. ) Aaahh.
    She walks to the window and looks out into the night. Deeley and Anna watch her.
    Deeley begins to sing softly.
    DEELEY ( Singing. ) The way you wear your hat . . .
    ANNA ( Singing, softly. ) The way you sip your tea . . .
    DEELEY ( Singing. ) The memory of all that . . .
    ANNA ( Singing. ) No, no, they can’t take that away from me . . .
    Kate turns from the window to look at them.
    ANNA ( Singing. ) The way your smile just beams . . .
    DEELEY ( Singing. ) The way you sing off key . . .
    ANNA ( Singing. ) The way you haunt my dreams . . .
    DEELEY ( Singing. ) No, no, they can’t take that away from me . . .
    Kate walks down towards them and stands, smiling. Anna and Deeley sing again, faster on cue, and more perfunctorily.
    ANNA ( Singing. ) The way you hold your knife—
    DEELEY ( Singing. ) The way we danced till three—
    ANNA ( Singing. ) The way you’ve changed my life—
    DEELEY No, no, they can’t take that away from me.
    Kate sits on a divan.
    ANNA ( To Deeley. ) Doesn’t she look beautiful?
    DEELEY Doesn’t she?
    KATE Thank you. I feel fresh. The water’s very soft here. Much softer than London. I always find the water very hard in London. That’s one reason I like living in the country. Everything’s softer. The water, the light, the shapes, the sounds. There aren’t such edges here. And living close to the sea too. You can’t say where it begins or ends. That appeals to me. I don’t care for harsh lines. I deplore that kind of urgency. I’d like to go to the East, or somewhere like that, somewhere very hot, where you can lie under a mosquito net and breathe quite slowly. You know . . . somewhere where you can look through the flap of a tent and see sand, that kind of thing. The only nice thing about a big city is that when it rains it blurs everything, and it blurs the lights from the cars, doesn’t it, and blurs your eyes, and you have rain on your lashes. That’s the only nice thing about a big city.
    ANNA