The Complete Dramatic Works (35 page)

[
Pause
for
 
MRS ROONEY
to
ascertain.
]

MRS ROONEY:
The Lynch twins jeering at us.

[
Cries.
]

MR ROONEY:
Will they pelt us with mud today, do you suppose?

[
Cries.
]

MRS ROONEY:
Let us turn and face them. [
Cries.
They
turn.
Silence.
] Threaten them with your stick. [
Silence.
]
They have run away.

[
Pause
.]

MR ROONEY:
Did you ever wish to kill a child? [
Pause.
]
Nip some young doom in the bud. [
Pause.
]
Many a time at night, in winter, on the black road home, I nearly attacked the boy.
[
Pause.
]
Poor Jerry! [
Pause.
]
What restrained me then? [
Pause.
]
Not fear of man. [
Pause.
]
Shall we go on backwards now a little?

MRS ROONEY:
Backwards?

MR ROONEY:
Yes. Or you forwards and I backwards. The
perfect
pair. Like Dante’s damned, with their faces arsy-versy. Our tears will water our
bottoms.

MRS ROONEY:
What is the matter, Dan? Are you not well?

MR ROONEY:
Well! Did you ever know me to be well? The day
you met me I should have been in bed. The day you proposed to me the doctors gave
me up. You knew that, did you not? The night you married me they came for me with
an ambulance. You have not forgotten that, I suppose? [
Pause.
]
No, I cannot be said to be well. But I am no worse. Indeed I am better than I was.
The loss of my sight was a great fillip. If I could go deaf and dumb I think I might
pant on to be a hundred. Or have I done so? [
Pause.
]
Was I a hundred today? [
Pause.
]
Am I a hundred, Maddy?

[
Silence.
]

MRS ROONEY:
All is still. No living soul in sight. There is no one to ask. The world is feeding.
The wind–[
Brief
wind.
]
–scarcely stirs the leaves and the
birds–[
Brief
chirp.
]–are tired singing. The cows– [
Brief
moo.
]–and sheep–[
Brief
baa.
]–ruminate in silence. The dogs– [
Brief
bark.
]–are hushed and the hens–[
Brief cackle
.]–sprawl torpid in the dust. We are alone. There is no one to ask.

[
Silence
.]

MR ROONEY:
[
Clearing
his
throat,
narrative
tone.
]
We drew out on the tick of time, I can vouch for that. I was–

MRS ROONEY:
How can you vouch for it?

MR ROONEY:
[
Normal
tone,
angrily.
]
I can vouch for it, I tell you! Do you want my relation or don’t you? [
Pause.
Narrative
tone.
]
On the tick of time. I had the
compartment
to myself, as usual. At least I hope so, for I made no attempt to restrain myself.
My mind– [
Normal
tone.
] But why do we not sit down somewhere? Are we afraid we should never rise again?

MRS ROONEY:
Sit down on what?

MR ROONEY:
On a bench, for example.

MRS ROONEY:
There is no bench.

MR ROONEY:
Then on a bank, let us sink down upon a bank.

MRS ROONEY:
There is no bank.

MR ROONEY:
Then we cannot. [
Pause.
]
I dream of other roads, in other lands. Of another home, another–[
He
hesitates.
]–another home. [
Pause.
]
What was I trying to say?

MRS ROONEY:
Something about your mind.

MR ROONEY:
[
Startled.
]
My mind? Are you sure? [
Pause.
Incredulous.
]
My mind?… [
Pause.
]
Ah yes. [
Narrative
tone
.]
Alone in the compartment my mind began to work, as so often after office hours, on
the way home, in the train, to the lilt of the bogeys. Your season-ticket, I said,
costs you twelve pounds a year and you earn, on an average, seven and six a day, that
is to say barely enough to keep you alive and twitching with the help of food, drink,
tobacco and periodicals until you finally reach home and fall into bed. Add to this–or
subtract from it–rent, stationery, various subscriptions, tramfares to and fro, light
and heat, permits and licences, hairtrims and shaves, tips to escorts, upkeep of premises
and appearances, and a thousand unspecifiable sundries, and it is clear that by lying
at home in bed, day and night, winter and summer, with a change of pyjamas once a
fortnight, you would add very considerably to your income. Business, I said–[
A
cry.
Pause.
Again.
Normal
tone.
]
Did I hear a cry?

MRS ROONEY:
Mrs Tully I fancy. Her poor husband is in constant pain and beats her unmercifully.

[
Silence.
]

MR ROONEY:
That was a short knock. [
Pause.
]
What was I trying to get at?

MRS ROONEY:
Business.

MR ROONEY:
Ah yes, business. [
Narrative
tone.
]
Business, old man, I said, retire from business, it has retired from you. [
Normal
tone.
]
One has these moments of lucidity.

MRS ROONEY:
I feel very cold and weak.

MR ROONEY:
[
Narrative
tone.
]
On the other hand, I said, there are the horrors of home life, the dusting, sweeping,
airing, scrubbing, waxing, waning, washing, mangling, drying, mowing, clipping, raking,
rolling, scuffling, shovelling, grinding, tearing, pounding, banging and slamming.
And the brats, the happy little healthy little howling neighbours’ brats. Of all this
and much more the week-end, the
Saturday
intermission and then the day of rest, have given you some idea. But what must it
be like on a working-day? A Wednesday? A Friday? What must it be like on a Friday!
And I fell to thinking of my silent, backstreet, basement office, with its obliterated
plate, rest-couch and velvet
hangings, and what it means to be buried there alive, if only from ten to five, with
convenient to the one hand a bottle of light pale ale and to the other a long ice-cold
fillet of hake. Nothing, I said, not even fully certified death, can ever take the
place of that. It was then I noticed that we were at a standstill. [
Pause.
Normal
tone.
Irritably.
] Why are you hanging out of me like that? Have you swooned away?

MRS ROONEY:
I feel very cold and faint. The wind–[
Whistling
wind
.]–is whistling through my summer frock as if I had nothing on over my bloomers. I
have had no solid food since my elevenses.

MR ROONEY:
You have ceased to care. I speak–and you listen to the wind.

MRS ROONEY:
No, no, I am agog, tell me all, then we shall press on and never pause, never pause,
till we come safe to haven.

[
Pause
.]

MR ROONEY:
Never pause… safe to haven…. Do 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 dog down there.

MRS ROONEY:
No no, just the rotting leaves.

MR ROONEY:
In June? Rotting leaves in June?

MRS ROONEY:
Yes, dear, from last year, and from the year before last, and from the year before
that again. [
Silence.
Rainy
wind.
They
move
on.
Dragging
steps,
etc.
]
There is that lovely laburnum again. Poor thing, it is losing all its tassels. [
Dragging
steps,
etc.
]
There are the first drops. [
Rain.
Dragging
steps,
etc.
]
Golden drizzle. [
Dragging steps,
etc.
]
Do not mind me, dear, I am just talking to myself. [
Rain
heavier.
Dragging
steps,
etc.
]
Can hinnies procreate, I wonder? [
They
halt.
]