The Collected Shorter Plays Read Online Free PDF Page B

you know, Maddy, sometimes one would think you were struggling with a dead language.
MRS. ROONEY
Yes indeed, Dan, I know full well what you mean, I often have that feeling, it is unspeakably excruciating.
MR. ROONEY
I confess I have it sometimes myself, when I happen to overhear what I am saying.
MRS. ROONEY
Well, you know, it will be dead in time, just like our own poor dear Gaelic, there is that to be said. [
Urgent baa
.]
MR. ROONEY
[
startled
] Good God!
MRS. ROONEY
Oh the pretty little woolly lamb, crying to suck its mother! Theirs has not changed, since Arcady.
[
Pause
.]
MR. ROONEY
Where was I in my composition?
MRS. ROONEY
At a standstill.
MR. ROONEY
Ah yes. [
Clears his throat. Narrative tone
.] I concluded naturally that we had entered a station and would soon be on our way again, and I sat on, without misgiving. Not a sound. Things are very dull today, I said, nobody getting down, nobody getting on. Then as time flew by and nothing happened I realized my error. We had not entered a station.
MRS. ROONEY
Did you not spring up and poke your head out of the window?
MR. ROONEY
What good would that have done me?
MRS. ROONEY
Why to call out to be told what was amiss.
MR. ROONEY
I did not care what was amiss. No, I just sat on, saying, If this train were never to move again I should not greatly mind. Then gradually a—how shall I say—a growing desire to—er—you know—welled up within me. Nervous probably. In fact now I am sure. You know, the feeling of being confined.
MRS. ROONEY
Yes yes, I have been through that.
MR. ROONEY
If we sit here much longer, I said, I really do not know what I shall do. I got up and paced to and fro between the seats, like a caged beast.
MRS. ROONEY
That is a help sometimes.
MR. ROONEY
After what seemed an eternity we simply moved off. And the next thing was Barrell bawling the abhorred name. I got down and Jerry led me to the men’s, or Fir as they call it now, from Vir Viris I suppose, the V becoming F, in accordance with Grimm’s Law. [
Pause
.] The rest you know. [
Pause
.] You say nothing? [
Pause
.] Say something. Maddy. Say you believe me.
MRS. ROONEY
I remember once attending a lecture by one of these new mind doctors. I forget what you call them. He spoke—
MR. ROONEY
A lunatic specialist?
MRS. ROONEY
No no, just the troubled mind. I was hoping he might shed a little light on my lifelong preoccupation with horses’ buttocks.
MR. ROONEY
A neurologist.
MRS. ROONEY
No no, just mental distress, the name will come back to me in the night. I remember his telling us the story of a little girl, very strange and unhappy in her ways, and how he treated her unsuccessfully over a period of years and was finally obliged to give up the case. He could find nothing wrong with her, he said. The only thing wrong with her as far as he could see was that she was dying. And she did in fact die, shortly after he had washed his hands of her.
MR. ROONEY
Well? What is there so wonderful about that?
MRS. ROONEY
No, it was just something he said, and the way he said it, that have haunted me ever since.
MR. ROONEY
You lie awake at night, tossing to and fro and brooding on it.
MRS. ROONEY
On it and other . . . wretchedness. [
Pause
.] When he had done with the little girl he stood there motionless for some time, quite two minutes I should say, looking down at his table. Then he suddenly raised his head and exclaimed, as if he had had a revelation, The trouble with her was she had never really been born! [
Pause
.] He spoke throughout without notes. [
Pause
.] I left before the end.
MR. ROONEY
Nothing about your buttocks? [
Mrs. Rooney weeps. In affectionate remonstrance
.] Maddy!
MRS. ROONEY
There is nothing to be done for those people!
MR. ROONEY
For which is there? [
Pause
.] That does not sound right somehow. [
Pause
.] What way am I facing?
MRS. ROONEY
What?
MR. ROONEY
I have forgotten what way I am facing.
MRS. ROONEY
You have turned aside and are bowed down over the ditch.
MR. ROONEY
There is a dead