Country Girls Page 4

  Singing Woman (offstage)

  Who should I see but a Spanish lady

  Washing her hair by candlelight.

  An Indian woman with a bindi in a saffron sari walks by.

  Baba Jesus, they’re in their underwear here.

  Kate She’s gorgeous.

  Baba She’s like something dug up.

  Kate Isn’t it heaven?

  Baba In the convent now, we’d be going to confession, ‘Bless me, Father, ’cause I have sinned.’ Old Mary must have had kittens when she saw what was written on the card. I bet she’ll leave there … I bet it gave her ideas.

  Kate stops in front of the cart and reads a sign.

  Kate ‘Fortunes told. Cards, crystal, tea leaves. Price reasonable.’

  A Young Boy cycles past with a trolley affixed to his bicycle, selling ice creams.

  Baba (to the young boy) How much?

  Boy Thruppence.

  Baba Have a heart.

  Baba gives him a nudge.

  Boy hesitates, then hands them one choc ice.

  Baba takes the first lick and they share the ice cream over the scene.

  We’ll be clicking guys like mad … They say there’s over fifty ways of kissing.

  Kate Who says?

  Baba I bet you’re a great kisser.

  Kate Who said that?

  Baba Your pillow in the morning is wringing wet.

  Kate That’s nightmares. I dream of my mother most nights … she’s getting into the bed beside me.

  Baba Forget your mother … forget your father … forget all that bloody drivel. You want to live, live.

  Kate How?

  Baba Men … big cars … style … posh restaurants.

  Kate If I tell you something, will you promise not to tell?

  Baba Cross my heart.

  Kate (hesitant) When you … when you fall, for someone … d’you get that funny feeling … kind of goose pimples inside you … like that you’re going to swoon.

  Baba Sweet … Jes–us.

  Kate I had the exact same feeling for two different people, two different sexes, Sister Mary and …

  Baba (cutting in) Old M and Old G. You’re a nymphomaniac.

  Kate Is it the same for men?

  Baba Ask Mr G.

  Kate I haven’t seen him … he’s disappeared.

  Baba Well, we have better fish to fry now.

  Baba and Kate enter their boarding house where the German landlady Joanna is waiting for them. She is in an apron, and brandishing a wooden spoon.

  Joanna Mein Gott … your rent … not on table under cup and saucer. No money, no juice … I search you room … your suitcases … No hygiene … dirt underwear.

  Baba How dare you break into our bedroom? It’s private.

  Joanna I need one week advance.

  Baba (hoity-toity) Mummy and Daddy always settle their accounts quarterly … that’s what’s done.

  Joanna I no like cheek … I no like dishonest girls. (Loudly.) Gustav, Gustav.

  Gustav comes out, a small, frightened man with a knitted cap which he lifts on and off as he drinks them in.

  Gustav Ladies. Ladies.

  Kate I’ll get my wages, Friday … I’ll pay then.

  Joanna You pay now.

  Kate We haven’t got it.

  Joanna Wasting money in the cafeteria … lipstick … hosiery … (Brusquely.) Gustav.

  Gustav Nice ladies. Nice. Plump. Rosy cheeks. I tell joke.

  Joanna No jokes, Gustav … not for young girls.

  Gustav Going to the pictures, ladies?

  Baba No juice at the pictures.

  Gustav Me … I kissed Joanna for very first time at pictures.

  Baba Me, I think you’re a right lookin’ eejit.

  Gustav and Joanna go.

  Her aul arse is bound to drop off … it looks like something stuck on. He’s a moron.

  Baba goes.

  Kate goes and returns in a white coat pushing a tea trolley which serves as a shop counter. It has big bags of sugar and a weighing scales. With a scoop she starts to fill smaller bags with the sugar.

  Messenger Boy on bicycle enters opposite, ringing the bell chirpily.

  Mrs Burns, suet-pale, heavy, also in a shop coat enters, yawning.

  Mrs Burns Darling … you found everything.

  Kate Most things.

  Mrs Burns You’ll be sure to double check the prices and count the change … there’s people come back and pretend they got wrong change … And keep your eyes glued to the till. The city is full of vice … two hold-ups the week before last and a woman assaulted at a bus stop.

  Kate Oh my God.

  In shock, Kate drops the pound bag of sugar on to the floor and Mrs Burns changes from smarmy voice, furious.

  Mrs Burns Get a dustpan and sweep it up.

  Kate It’s not that dirty. I can pick the specks out.

  Mrs Burns You cannot. Money doesn’t grow on trees, you know. I’ll have to dock that off your wages.

  Baba on the dais, in her black slip, holding a phone. She dials a number vehemently.

  The telephone rings and Mrs Burns answers it. She holds it for Kate to hear. Baba’s voice can be heard loudly.

  Baba Where’s my fecking bra?

  Kate I don’t know.

  Baba You took it.

  Kate I didn’t … it must be in the bed covers. Where are you? Are you in the typing school?

  Baba I am not. I can’t go out … I’m flopping all over the fecking place … You better come home and give it back.

  Kate I haven’t got it.

  Mrs Burns crosses and takes the phone, puts down the receiver. She then picks up the dustpan with the spilt sugar.

  Mrs Burns (as she goes) We don’t want any of your country ways … Things are done differently here … with finesse. My husband will have to have a little heart to heart with you later on.

  Mrs Burns goes, carrying the dustpan as Messenger Boy crosses to Kate.

  Messenger Boy She’s a hag.

  Kate Do they give us a cup of tea or anything?

  Messenger Boy Tea my eye … they wouldn’t give you a fright. At Christmas they said I would get a Christmas box … I’m waitin’ for it yet. Where you from?

  Kate The West.

  Messenger Boy Have they shillelaghs there?

  Kate (smarting) They have, and crocks of gold.

  Kate goes to the boarding house where Joanna is preserving eggs.

  Kate stands, watches and then starts to help her.

  Joanna You mean you never preserved eggs before?

  Kate No.

  Joanna Mein Gott … you not industrious.

  Kate We had fresh eggs every day … (Recalling it.) Chookchookchookchookchook.

  Joanna That is the thing about Irish people … all feast and then famine.

  Kate That’s because we are all descended from kings and queens.

  Joanna Kings and queens … no juice to be poor.

  Kate Why did you come to Dublin, Joanna?

  Pause.

  Joanna Gustav. We work in Wildhaus … He meet this rich lady and she offer him a job in her dairy farm. We sell up … we come with our few things … Rich lady, she wants my Gustav but no Joanna … (More practical voice.) I could be foreman in a factory now in my own country, not a landlady to cheeky girls.

  Kate We’re not that bad.

  Joanna Big big appetites – you steal meatballs from larder in middle of the night.

  Kate That’s because you’re a great cook.

  Joanna (smiling) You think?

  Kate I know.

  Enthused by this, Joanna takes from under the trolley a shoe box with a folded lilac nightdress and a cake tin. She opens the lid and holds it for Kate to see. It is a cake iced with almond icing and little fur chicks on it.

  Joanna My own recipe. Easter Sunday I give you a slice. Smell … my own liqueur.

  Kate smells it and puts her hand on one of the little chicks, which chirps and makes her jump.

/>   Kate touches the silk of the folded nightdress, longing to see it.

  You a nice girl. Your friend, she make trouble … she ruin the good bedspread with cigarette burns. She make eyes at my Gustav.

  Baba comes in waving a handbag, excited. She is wearing a fitted tartan jacket and tartan skirt. Kate looks at her jealously.

  Kate Where did you get it?

  Baba swans around.

  Baba Off a lorry.

  Gustav has come in to watch.

  Gustav Nice, nice ladies … the cat’s pyjamas.

  Baba (to Kate) We’ve got dates.

  Kate With who?

  Baba Rich merchants. My fella has his initials on everything – his ring his watch his cufflinks … Your fella’s an auctioneer.

  Kate They sound awful.

  Baba And for feck’s sake don’t bring up James Joyce’s Dubliners.

  Kate I will if I want.

  Baba He can blow his own horn.

  Kate He’s dead.

  Baba And I am not taking a shorthand typing course. I am in a modelling school.

  Gustav and Joanna go.

  Two men enter at the side of the stage, Harry is wearing a navy blazer with brass buttons and Reg is wearing a white blazer, not quite as smart.

  Harry Dolly birds … which is mine?

  Reg The one with the hair.

  Harry Bit rustic.

  They whisper to each other and nudge with suggestive smiles.

  Kate They’re spivs.

  Baba Lots of lolly … lots of lovely lolly, and don’t call me Baba … I’m Baubra.

  Kate Okay.

  Baba Baubra.

  Kate Bar-ba-ra.

  Baba Feck … Baubra. Say it. Say it.

  There is no time, as the two men have crossed to greet them, both with their shirts open down their chest.

  Harry I’m Harry … so you must be Kate … You’ve got very pretty eyes.

  Reg What’s your poison, Kate?

  Baba Gin. Pink gin.

  Reg flicks thumb and forefinger for the drinks to be brought.

  Reg (to Kate) I understand you like poetry … I know my Yeats – backwards … Did Baba tell you what I do? I’m a confectioner … I sweeten life … ha ha ha … You don’t find that funny.

  Baba (to Kate) Laugh … Chrissake laugh.

  Reg She will when we get a few pints into her.

  The drinks are put down and they all drink rapidly.

  Harry There was an old man with a spit on his dick –

  Reg (cutting in) Later, Harry … later … The night is young. So what is it to be, girls? Fish or fowl … surf or turf … sea breeze or mountain air. Girls?

  Baba I fancy the mountain … I’d like the ride … (Humming.) ‘She’ll be coming down the mountain when she comes, when she comes.’

  Reg We know a very nice olde world place … just beyond the Featherbed. We’ve drank their cellars dry many a night.

  Baba That’s the ticket.

  Harry leans over to take off Kate’s earring.

  Harry I can see they’re hurting you.

  She stops him.

  Reg Did you bring the Jag?

  Harry Defo.

  Reg Let’s get out of this dive …

  The two men go to pay the waiter.

  Baba I’ll never bring you out again …

  Kate I’ll never come. I’ll scream if that thug Harry touches me.

  Baba Think of the dinner … confit of Galway salmon and saddle of Leitrim lamb with mint sauce.

  Reg links Baba, Harry links Kate and they walk off.

  The scene transitions to Harry’s drawing room. They are all seated on the chaise, the girls squeezed in between the two men. Baba and Reg playing footsie.

  On an easel is a painting of a woman in red taffeta with overdone bouffant blonde hair.

  Reg A very good likeness of Betty.

  Harry We like it … I had it commissioned for our twenty-fifth anniversary. Betty knows her art … especially Giotto – eats drinks and sleeps Giotto. The only man I need to be jealous of.

  Reg Is he the bookie that lives out in Killiney and made the haul?

  Harry (with forced laughter) Giotto was a fourteenth-century painter from Assisi … famous for its frescoes. I can’t take you anywhere, old boy. (Chuckling.) A bookie out in Killiney … you’re a bog man.

  Baba (interrupting to defuse tension) What do men ask for, most, in a woman?

  Reg Bewitchment.

  Harry Yes, definitely bewitchment … I must confess I like a bit of flesh … I don’t like these scarecrows that you see in Grafton Street.

  Reg Then there’s always the mystery factor.

  Baba The oomph.

  Harry Exactly … the oomph. The rhythm … the rhumba.

  Reg (to Kate) How about a song … pretty eyes?

  Baba She can’t sing.

  Kate suddenly starts to sing ‘Molly Bawn’.

  Kate (singing)

  Come all ye late fowlers

  That follows the sun

  Beware of nights rambling

  By the setting of the sun

  Beware of an accident

  As happened of late

  It was Molly Bawn Leary

  And sad was her fate.

  Reg Jesus, that went out with the Ark.

  Baba Sure did.

  Kate (singing)

  He took her for a fawn

  Poor fate and alas –

  Reg Like a bloody wake here.

  Baba crosses and winds up the gramophone: ‘Straighten Up and Fly Right’.

  Baubra, you’re the business.

  Baba Mud in your eye, Reginald.

  Reg (to Harry) Harry, can I show Baba your oils?

  Harry Good idea.

  They go off, with Baba lolling on Reg’s arm.

  Harry nuzzles closer to Kate on the chaise as she crosses her legs and sits aloof.

  At last. I understand you … I can see you’re artistic … You know, the thing about me, I’m artistic too … I make chairs, beautiful Hepplewhite chairs, out of matchboxes … let’s drink to that.

  Kate I’d like a cup of tea.

  Harry I’ll tell you a fairy tale first.

  Kate Do, do that.

  Harry Once upon a time there was a cock and a fox and a pussy cat and they lived on an island far away and there came the urgent need to go to the mainland … But … only the fox could swim, and the gentleman that he was, he ferried them over to the other side and what do we get, a wet cock –

  Kate jumps up.

  Kate (jumps up) You’re vile.

  Harry – and a contented pussy.

  Kate I want to go home.

  Harry pulls her up to dance.

  Harry Prickly pear, aren’t we? They say they’re the sweetest, once a bloke gets past the pricks.

  Kate tries to break away.

  Relax. Relax … loosen up … Say the rosary if you must. Just slip your panties off, baby … and leave the rest to lover man.

  Kate breaks away, knocks the picture off the easel, which falls to the floor.

  Christ … woman. That’s my wife you have just dismantled.

  Lights lower.

  Harry carries out the easel.

  Light of street lamp.

  Kate and Baba with shoes in their hands walk together. Baba is showing the white hand-towels with Harry and Betty’s names initialled in red, which she has stolen. She then hauls from her handbag a silver-backed hairbrush and a big bottle of perfume with a rubber nozzle, which she sprays.

  Kate How did you get them?

  Baba He fell asleep … he snores like a horse. So I had a little wander in Betty’s boudoir.

  Kate You’re too fast, Baba … too fast. The smut I had to put up with …

  Baba I know the ropes and the sooner you know the ropes the better.

  Kate What ropes?

  Baba (half singing it) They’re not going to splash out and buy drinks and get feck-all for it. They’re not monks.

  Mr Gentl
eman, who has been waiting under a street light, walks towards them, smoking.

  Mr Gentleman What are you young ladies doing out at this time of night?

  Baba Touch of the ground frost, Mr Gentleman.

  Baba skips past him and sprays the perfume nozzle in their direction.

  Kate (softly) Hello.

  Mr Gentleman (softly) Where were you?

  Kate Out with spivs.

  Mr Gentleman I was thinking of you … so I came and knocked on your door. The landlady did invite me in, but I declined.

  Kate Did she say we were bad?

  Mr Gentleman No … Are you bad?

  Kate They were awful, awful, boasting about their posh houses and their posh paintings … ignoramuses.

  Mr Gentleman So you didn’t lose your heart to one of them?

  Kate Don’t be daft.

  Mr Gentleman I’ve been thinking of you a lot … when I shouldn’t.

  Kate does not reply.

  I don’t know how it happened … but it happened … You can tell me to go away if you wish.

  Kate I don’t, wish. (Blurts it out.) The night before we left for Dublin, the Brennans had a party, we heard you were back from the cruise … I hoped … (She stops suddenly.)

  Mr Gentleman What did you hope, Kate?

  Kate That you’d see me here in Dublin.

  Mr Gentleman You realise the danger … the risk?

  Kate I sort of do.

  Mr Gentleman I tried to put you out of my mind … Everything is worse at home … worse for everybody. One night there was a storm, two cedars on our avenue were uprooted and literally fell into each other’s embrace. I got up … I had to drive, I had to … I didn’t care what happened … Along the way there were boughs and branches … Just outside Nenagh I was stopped … two men clearing the road … I got out and told them it was an emergency … I picked up a branch and they let me drive on. I left it here on your doorstep.

  Kate I found it … a willow branch.

  Mr Gentleman Did you know that I’d left it?

  Kate I thought it was goodbye.

  Mr Gentleman How could it be?

  He takes her hand and places their two hands on her heart, which is beating wildly.

  He goes.

  Baba and Kate run down the street by the Fortune Teller’s tent.

  Kate Let’s have our fortunes told.

  Baba What for?

  Kate I’m on air, Baba … I am on air.

  Baba What did he do?

  Kate He put our two hands on our hearts.

  Baba He’ll probably set you up in a flat … You can’t keep on going out to Clontarf … to sit on the bloody dunes.