I thought it would be interesting today to anthropomorphize a corporation since I love to do that so much with the animals and other creatures of our planet. Heck, I even like to give Earth the characteristics of a graceful warrior and serene being. Hmmm. Isn't there a womanifesto out there somewhere that mentions the graceful warrior?
OK. I confess. I absolutely idolize my dear Gaea and Gaia, her physical manifestation. She is the finest example of a Woman Not Waiting out there and truly a force to be reckoned with while at the same time nurturing, wise, loving, and infinitely patient. She is also the most compassionate teacher although her students often choose not to listen.
So let's examine one such student of Gaia who decided to drop out of in pre-school. Yes, the terrible toddler – the corporate entity.
If you are interested in understanding how a business platform for commerce and riches weaseled its way into obtaining legal rights as a "person" in the mid-1800s and enjoys ever increasing rights over and above a real person, the documentary The Corporation is an excellent resource. The history of mob "toddlerism" has its root in, you guessed it, the mastery of money over the human slave.
And nowhere has this selfish nose mining, string pulling, whining, tantrum throwing, and reckless behaviour been more destruction than in the tar sandbox (well actually it is rampant in the mining industry too, and then the agri-business industry, and also the factory-farm industry, and let's not forget the fisheries, and…your get the picture).
The toddlers playing in the tar sandbox have not developed their great faculties of cause and effect.They just aren't mature enough to realize that drinking the tailing water is not a good thing. So let's take a moment of silence out of appreciation for their enormously powerful sense of curiosity and exploration and then lay down the rules.
"Now Mikey, we all have to share, remember?" Gaia attempts to explain.
"No I don't…it's mine mine mine!" And thus the legal and environmental stomping begins.
It is unconscionable to think that YOU as an individual would be legally allowed to dump any of your garbage into the municipal water well without suffering a penalty from local authorities. However, as a corporation you get the right to dump your chemical poop straight into rivers, into oceans, into the ground and the underlying water table (as in the case of fracking), and into lakes,. You can even create your own industry-made lakes called tailing ponds.
Take for example, the following headline: Enbridge Rejects Ontario Demands On Pipeline. Now replace that headline with "YOUR NAME" Rejects Ontario Demands On Poopline. Do you think you would be able to get away with this?
How about this headline: Americans Finding Themselves Powerless to Stop YOUR NAME From Taking Their Land? Would you be able to dig a trench to put your poopline under the Tanciar's swimming pool in Fenton, Michigan?
Or what if you took your fancy pail and shovel and did this to the local forest? Too bad for the poor animals living on the wrong side of the tracks, eh?
So how can we rein in these spoiled toddlers and teach them the rules of fair play?
Well, it turns out that all land in Canada is "leased" from the Crown. The government essentially owns it all; individuals are simply tenants with the purchase process acting more like a front-loaded rental agreement. For example, if there happen to be endangered species living on someone's "property", the government can designate it as a protected marshland.
However you choose to use your land, you must have the proper permits and permissions from the government…regardless of which political party is in power.
Did you hear that Mikey? The land is not yours, yours, yours— even the tar sandbox you think you're the boss of.
Now THAT is the best news I've heard so far regarding the Tar Sands.
The government has the power to dictate that all Gaia abuse cease immediately and the "owners" vacate the property unless they comply…and we have the power to put pressure on them by writing letters, signing petitions, joining protests, and educating our social circles until 2015 and if THEY don't comply…vote them out!


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text:
# Ninety

# Joanna Murray-Smith

Currency Press • Sydney

# Table of Contents

Title Page
Copyright Page
Playwright's Biography
First Production
Characters
Setting

www.currencypress.com.au
CURRENCY PLAYS

First published in 2009
Currency Press Pty Ltd
PO Box 2287
Strawberry Hills NSW 2012
www.currencypress.com.au
enquiries@currency.com.au

Copyright © Joanna Murray-Smith, 2009

First electronic edition published in 2012 by Currency Press Pty Ltd.

Copying for Educational Purposes

The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10% of this book, whichever is the greater, to be reproduced and/or communicated by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that educational institution (or the body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act. For details of the CAL licence for educational institutions contact CAL, Level 15, 233 Castlereagh Street, Sydney NSW, 2000. Tel: (02) 9394 7600; email: info@copyright.com.au

Copying for Other Purposes

Except as permitted under the Act, for example a fair dealing for the purposes of study, research, criticism or review, all rights are reserved. This publication (or any part of it) may not be reproduced or transmitted, copied, stored, distributed or otherwise made available by any person or entity (including Google, Amazon or similar organisations), in any form (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical) or by any means (photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise) without prior written permission from the publisher.

Performing Rights

Any performance or public reading of Ninety is forbidden unless a licence has been received from the author or the author's agent. The purchase of this book in no way gives the purchaser the right to perform the play in public, whether by means of a staged production or a reading. All applications for public performance should be directed to the playwright c/- Currency Press.

Printed book ISBN: 9780868198514

ePub ISBN: 9781921429514

Typeset by Dean Nottle for Currency Press. Cover design by Laura McLean, Currency Press. Cover shows Kim Gyngell as William and Melinda Butel as Isabel in the 2008 MTC production. (Photo: Jeff Busby)

# Playwright's Biography

JOANNA MURRAY-SMITH's plays have been produced throughout Australia and all over the world. They include Honour, The Female of the Species, Songs for Nobodies, Rockabye, Ninety, Bombshells, Rapture, Nightfall, Redemption, Love Child, Atlanta and Flame, many of which have been translated into other languages and adapted for radio. She has also adapted Ingmar Bergman's Scenes from a Marriage for Sir Trevor Nunn. Her novels include Truce, Judgement Rock and Sunnyside, all published by Penguin. Sunnyside was also published by Viking UK. Her work has been nominated for and won many awards.

# FIRST PRODUCTION

Ninety was first produced by Melbourne Theatre Company at the Fairfax Theatre, Melbourne, on 22 August 2008 with the following cast:

ISABEL | Melinda Butel
---|---
WILLIAM | Kim Gyngell

Director, Simon Phillips
Set Design, Andrew Bellchambers
Lighting Design, Nick Schlieper

# CHARACTERS

ISABEL, around forty

WILLIAM, five or six years older

# SETTING

Isabel's work studio. It has as little or as much dressing as required, but the overall impression is of a room curated by an elegant eye. In the room is an easel with a very beautiful painting of a couple, done in the style of a Van Eyck and vaguely reminiscent of 'Mr and Mrs Arnolfini'. Hanging around the top of the easel is a watch.

# THANKS

Ninety came into itself through the significant talents of Simon Phillips, Kym Gyngell, Melinda Butel and Rachel Griffiths.

Thanks to all the staff of the Melbourne Theatre Company. As always, I am indebted to Raymond Gill. And particular thanks to Dr Joe Crameri, who wouldn't remember us.
For Raymond and the Pantheon.
And for Charlie.
As the play begins, ISABEL is working at the easel with a tiny brush, small dabs interspersed with long periods of contemplation. The door opens and WILLIAM enters. The start of the play needs to show a playfulness built from history.

WILLIAM: Your time starts now.

ISABEL: Latecomer.

WILLIAM: Scheduler.

ISABEL: I thought you might not [actually show]—

WILLIAM: Really?

ISABEL: Well.

WILLIAM: I said [I would]—

ISABEL: Yes, but—

WILLIAM: I said [I would]—

ISABEL: I know. [Beat.] But you said that last time.

WILLIAM: Ah. Last time.

ISABEL: And you didn't show.

WILLIAM: I was shooting.

ISABEL: No you weren't. I rang your agent. Max said there was a writers' strike in LA. Nothing was shooting. He said you were in Kenya. Some Abercrombie and Something luxury safari.

WILLIAM: That's what I mean. Shooting.

ISABEL: Lions? [Beat.] Even I know they're protected. Even I know all that went out with Hemingway.

WILLIAM: If you're very rich or famous they'll still let you sink an old gazelle or two while the World Wildlife Fund are taking tea.

ISABEL: Cynic.

WILLIAM: Sentimentalist.

ISABEL: It was good, actually. Last time.

WILLIAM: Good.

ISABEL: There is, as they say, something 'healing' in ceremony...

WILLIAM: Well.

ISABEL: It was lovely, actually. The park. The trees—

WILLIAM: 'In their burst of colour'—

ISABEL: In their burst of colour.

WILLIAM: I think we should let them go.

ISABEL: We should let them go?

WILLIAM: The dead. [Beat.] I don't believe in standing in a park and hearing The Prophet or The Tibetan Book of the fucking Dead and then going off to drink tea. Something about death sends tea consumption into a frenzy. I apologise.

ISABEL: It was lovely.

WILLIAM: Good. What did you do?

ISABEL: We went to the park. Marjorie read from... The Tibetan Book of the fucking Dead. Then we all came back to the house and... drank tea.

WILLIAM: Lovely.

ISABEL: I missed you.

WILLIAM: All right, so I didn't come. I'm busy. I have 'things on'. You may interpret this as self-importance and you may be right, but whatever, that's the way it is. I have a life. For what it's worth. I'm a citizen of the world of international travel and I love it. I apologise for my 'failure rate'. Anyway, enough about me. How are you?

She is about to respond when a small BlackBerry-type device/ phone starts beeping. He immediately pulls it out of his pocket, flips it open and reads the message, while she waits.

Huh! [He starts laughing.] Cheeky bastard! [He starts tapping a message back.] Stick that where it belongs! [He looks up at ISABEL.] Sorry! How are you?

ISABEL: Well, I'm—

The same device rings again. He flips it open.

WILLIAM: [to the phone] I'm busy! No. No, tell him if that stays, I walk. I walk! Don't talk to me about clauses. Don't fucking talk to me about clauses, speak English. I know. I know. I know. [He snaps the device shut.] Never leave me alone. It's horrific. My PA's brilliant, she's brilliant, but I'm her life. [Ironically] Sometimes I have to say, 'Back off, babe', you know what I'm saying?

ISABEL: Not really.

WILLIAM: The business.

ISABEL: Congratulations on being a Globe.

WILLIAM: You really don't get out much, do you? You don't become a Globe!

ISABEL: Oh.

WILLIAM: You win one. A Golden One. You make me sound like an artichoke.

ISABEL: Well, anyway, that was... something.

WILLIAM: A nice role. Great writing. Just happened to... tap into the zeitgeist.

ISABEL: You're very good, actually.

WILLIAM: Thank you, Isabel. Generous.

ISABEL: How is it, being famous?

WILLIAM: Oh, it's nice.

ISABEL: Good tables?

WILLIAM: Great tables. Reservations totally obsolescent.

ISABEL: The world of obsolescent reservations. Gosh.

WILLIAM: I've also got to the point where I can fly first and not eat every single thing that's offered to me. The really famous never, ever, ever eat. It's too mortal. They only drink bottled water.

ISABEL: I've read about it!

WILLIAM: All those truffle-tinged hors d'oeuvres and hot baked cookies four thousand miles above the Sahara are only for people for whom flying first is a special occurrence. The lovely hosties holding trays of superbly zapped morsels dip and sway, their tight little arses sashaying towards me in seat 1A. I say, 'No Thank You. Just some water, if you please, collected from that small bubbling spring in that newly discovered rainforest off the Amazon by very, very nice pygmies. And if you're all out of that, please don't worry your pretty little head about a damn thing. I'll just recline here, ever so slightly parched, and contemplate my fame.'

ISABEL: I suppose lots of women come your way now.

WILLIAM: Millions.

ISABEL: Do you bed all of them?

WILLIAM: Of course not! I'm not a slut! [Beat.] Just the blondes.

ISABEL: They mainly would be blondes, wouldn't they?

WILLIAM: Actually, I prefer brunettes, but I'm caught in a cliché.

ISABEL: When I think of all those nights you spent going to radical handicapped theatre troupes doing productions of seminal plays by obscure Finnish geniuses. In mime.

WILLIAM: Let me remind you: Income is the choreographer of ideology. [He turns to the painting on the easel.] This your latest, then?

ISABEL: Yes.

WILLIAM: Who are they?

ISABEL: Rock and Doris? We don't really know who they are. Probably a merchant and his wife.

WILLIAM: Rock and Doris, popular names in Antwerp in the sixteenth century, then?

ISABEL: They've been living with me for ten months, I had to call them something. It was found on a property in the Western District and dusted off by the beneficiaries. They want it restored, then they'll give it to Sothebys for auctioning next year.

WILLIAM: It looks like—

ISABEL: I know. But apparently not. There was some speculation it might have been an early study, but it's not Van Eyck. It's rather beautiful, don't you think? The supplication in his eyes—to what? God? Love?

WILLIAM: He might just be hungry. 'We've been sitting in front of this wanker for hours and has anyone offered us so much as a pomme frite?' [Beat.] Is it wonderful?

ISABEL: Is it wonderful to you?

WILLIAM: What do I know about wonderful?

ISABEL: I've stood in front of it for nearly a year, and still, it reveals something new almost every time I look at it.

WILLIAM: Nearly a year. Obsessive?

ISABEL: Patient. [Beat.] What astonishes me, is how little we've changed in five hundred years, we husbands and wives. There she is. Look at her. She's wondering where she becomes him, and where she is alone. Their faces were cloudier before. Layers and layers of varnish have come off. Hundreds of years of UV light, pollutants. Their gaze has been getting more distinct—

WILLIAM: You've been—

ISABEL: Bringing them back.

His BlackBerry goes off again.

WILLIAM: Oh fuck. [He flips it open and reads.] Fuck me! What's the point of delegating? [Typing] Tell. Them. No. Photo. Shoot. I don't care who they are. [Pause. Typing as he speaks] Who are they? [He waits for a response. Typing and speaking] Say yes, then!

ISABEL: What is that?

WILLIAM: It's like a BlackBerry, only much more expensive.

ISABEL: A BlackBerry?

WILLIAM: It's brilliant. And this one—the keyboard is enormous. Absolutely enormous. It's impossible to hit the wrong button.

ISABEL: But it's only two inches big.

WILLIAM: I have every fifteen minutes for the next month programmed into here. Can't live without it.

ISABEL: Can you turn it off?

WILLIAM: Technically it's turn-offable. But the concept makes me nervous.

She looks at him. He thinks. He turns it off and puts it aside.

ISABEL: [surveying him] Does someone take you shopping?

WILLIAM: Can you tell?

ISABEL: You look as if you've had help.

WILLIAM: I have had help, actually. And what I've learnt, in a nutshell, is that it's all about layering.

ISABEL: You got so lucky!

WILLIAM: That wasn't Vanity Fair's opinion, as I recall. I think they mentioned something about 'an ability to express the melancholy of the modern condition with tragi-comic insouciance'. The New Yorker, incidentally, captioned my portrait 'The man who made the small screen big'.

ISABEL: As a matter of interest... how quickly do you adjust to fame? How long does it take for that first rush of glorious bewilderment... the How Did This Happen to Me? phase... How long does it take before you start to wonder why even better things haven't happened to you?

WILLIAM: Seconds.

ISABEL: Do you miss anything about obscurity?

WILLIAM: The legitimacy of complaint.

Beat.

ISABEL: I miss you.

WILLIAM: I know. [Beat.] Isabel.

ISABEL: Yes.

WILLIAM: Why did you bring me here?

ISABEL: You know why I brought you here.

WILLIAM: I'm being picked up at seven.

ISABEL: Yes.

WILLIAM: The point is, we need to get on with it.

ISABEL: Ninety. Not much in the scheme of things. A blink.

WILLIAM: I'm here. Aren't I?

ISABEL: You're here because you know I'm—[right]

WILLIAM: No. It's a contract. You said on the phone—

ISABEL: Yes. All right.

WILLIAM: And by the by, I'm fourteen hours behind—

ISABEL: Yes, yes—

WILLIAM: On the phone at four a.m. you said—

ISABEL: It's a contract.

WILLIAM: Ninety. And then—

ISABEL: Yes.

WILLIAM: That's it.

ISABEL: Ninety.

WILLIAM: That's it.

ISABEL: That's the contract.

WILLIAM: Just so we're clear. The car is coming for me at seven.

ISABEL: So you said.

WILLIAM: The plane's at ten. Her parents are arriving in Gay Paree as we speak. It's all happening Dimanche.

ISABEL: The big day.

WILLIAM: La grande journée. Exactement. Charming young Parisian florists are designing floral concepts as we speak. Fancily wrapped presents are assembling themselves on dining tables. Celebrants are performing vocal exercises in preparation. It's happening.

ISABEL: Where did you propose?

Beat.

WILLIAM: Here, actually.

ISABEL: Where?

WILLIAM: Do you care?

ISABEL: Yes.

WILLIAM: At Adolpho's.

ISABEL: [unable to quite disguise her pain] You proposed at Adolpho's?

WILLIAM: I always go to Adolpho's when I'm in town.

ISABEL: Don't they have an Adolpho's in LA?

WILLIAM: Americans don't understand food. They're quite wonderful in their own way, but when visiting America it's advisable not to eat.

ISABEL: Uh-uh.

WILLIAM: And this city has the best food in the world. Not much happens here, but the citizens do eat well. I lie awake at night thinking about Adolpho's pumpkin and sage ravioli.

ISABEL: So you do eat.

WILLIAM: On the sly.

ISABEL: I think about the stuffed zucchini flowers virtually every day. When I was pregnant, I ordered them for entrée and main.

WILLIAM: He misses you. He pulls me aside. He likes you better than Vera.

ISABEL: Good old Adolpho.

WILLIAM: For a start, you eat a hell of a lot more than her.

ISABEL: Mildred rang me. Remember her? She's your mother. Sitting in a nursing home with a lot of other women who think they're Princess Diana.

WILLIAM: Thanks for reminding me.

ISABEL: She doesn't like Vera at all.

WILLIAM: She's not marrying her.

ISABEL: No, alas. How satisfying that would have been on so many levels. Where are you honeymooning?

WILLIAM: St Barths.

ISABEL: So chicly contrary—

WILLIAM: Thank you.

ISABEL: —going somewhere that's over.

WILLIAM: It's not over.

ISABEL: Baby, it's so over. Full of decaying, middle-aged men, and young 'actresses' paying for their vacations in blow jobs. [Beat.] It's amazing, isn't it? The resilience of hope?

WILLIAM: I want to be happy. Comprendez? Too shallow for you? Not enough angst? Not enough poetry? Not enough martyrdom? Some of us just want to be happy. [Beat.] Isabel. I'm here because I want, finally, to be done.

ISABEL: Done?

WILLIAM: Over.

ISABEL: It's not over.

WILLIAM: Sometimes it's just too late. We can be civilised.

ISABEL: Love's not civilised. [Beat.] William. You can't escape me.

WILLIAM: I can. I have. Without wishing to hurt you at all, I just don't love you anymore.

ISABEL: How easily it trips off the tongue. It's so familiar, somehow. We've all heard it so many times. In life. In books. In movies.

WILLIAM: I just don't love you anymore.

ISABEL: It's almost too familiar, don't you think? When we say the words, do we know what we're saying or are we just looking for something neat? Something to encapsulate... failure.

WILLIAM: Very you. Making something mind-numbingly complex of something dashingly simple. Let me say it again, nice and clear: I Just Don't Love You Anymore.

Beat.

ISABEL: No-one. No-one will love you as I love you.

WILLIAM: Maybe your standards are just lower.

ISABEL: You'd rather be loved less by someone who found you harder to love than me?

WILLIAM: Isn't that the whole wretched thing? Isabel? Isn't that the very reason human beings withstand famine and hijackings and cancer but collapse under the strain of love? We foil happiness because we don't believe we've earned it. [Beat.] I don't love you.

ISABEL: Why not?

WILLIAM: There's no point.

ISABEL: Tell me.

WILLIAM: It doesn't matter!

ISABEL: Say it!

WILLIAM: It would be cruel.

ISABEL: [urgently, she wants to know] I want you to be cruel. If you'd just say what you think, say what you feel, be fucking brutal, maybe I'll just go away.

Beat.

WILLIAM: [gathering force] All right. Well. You've brought me here, so it has to be said. I loved you. Yes. Once, I loved you. But I never really liked you. [Beat.] Your judgmentalism. Your high-handed opinions. Your snobbery disguised as intellect. Your voluptuous, somehow unconvincing compassion which always felt more about your claim to goodness than genuine feeling. That scent you wore of mildewed Persian rugs and how you never wore a watch. The way you drove, as if the rear-view mirror was just an optional extra. The way you always chose the restaurant but always swapped dishes when mine arrived looking better. The books you read—all those fucking Vikram Seths—as if you were preparing for a dinner party. The people you liked best—the ones who set themselves apart from the ordinary folk. Your superiority. I can't stand the way you carry on about how elitist things are when you're the fucking elite.

ISABEL: Actually, you like that.

WILLIAM: No, I don't. There are lots of things you think I like about you and it's taken me a while myself to realise how ghastly they are. You're such a martyr. All that passive aggressive shit! I was the shallow, vain actor and you were the hallowed wife!

ISABEL: You are the shallow, vain actor and I am the hallowed wife. I kept us alive, in case you've forgotten.

WILLIAM: For a couple of years. Then there's no end of payback. Every time I looked down at my email, there it was: Stafford and Burkip. Stafford and fucking Burkip, whose business it is to hound husbands into the grave for more and more money.

ISABEL: We didn't have to sell the cottage—that was spite!

WILLIAM: No-one used it.

ISABEL: That was our cottage! We made her there.

WILLIAM: It was empty all fucking year. You only wanted it because you were notching up acquisitions. You've always been an acquirer. All this arty-farty stuff, all this spiritual crap, your higher consciousness with your Van Eycks and your Bergman festivals. Actually, you love money.

ISABEL: [not arch, she's puzzled] You're so hard, William. What made you so hard? What is it? That happiness doesn't actually make you that happy?

WILLIAM: Every time I tell you the truth you tell me I'm hard. Actually, you're the strategic one. Using words to win. [Beat.] Tell me what you want, Isabel. Because it seems to me you love having a reason to complain, like so many women. Instead of getting on with things, you have to find the fucking angst. What is it with women and their infatuation with injustice? It's your raison d'être. You want it all ways. You want to rule the world and you want to be looked after. Housewives who want to be CEOs, CEOs who want to be mummies, women who want men to find them hot, women who want men to treat them like men, women who want men to fuck off, women who want cave men with huge dongers, women who want sooks who understand them. Make up your fucking minds. We don't really care what you want. Just choose.

ISABEL: Funny, isn't it? How the arithmetic of a perfect marriage is when he becomes a bit more of her and she becomes a bit more of him.

WILLIAM: Neither of us was ever good at maths.

ISABEL: Once I said to you, I said: Love is about maintaining certain standards. You laughed. You said I could bring out a t-shirt. Standards of... of delicacy. Is that it? Of refusing to say what might be said because in love one makes a tacit pact to keep certain silences.

WILLIAM: What silences?

ISABEL: Love, honour, fidelity... obedience... they are all secondary. The number one vow is simply the promise not to notice too much. We make that choice in love. We make it easily at first. It's effortless. Because of the fucking and the mystery and the youth. It's easy. And then, one day, it starts. One breaks the pact, the other follows. You say some things, I say some things, and suddenly, we've glimpsed it. The end.

WILLIAM: I like endings. They provoke beginnings.

ISABEL: Tell me, when you walk in to your—to her—the place you're living. When you walk in there and you talk about—what?—one of Vera's favourite topics, say: Vera—doesn't the absence of things take you over? The worst and the best. The absence of—

WILLIAM: Of—

ISABEL: The absence of me.

Beat.

WILLIAM: Well. Sometimes. Perhaps. Only—

ISABEL: Well, then...

WILLIAM: Only...

ISABEL: So...

WILLIAM: I like it. The absence of you.

Beat.

ISABEL: And Bea?

WILLIAM: Dead. Gone. Vanished. [Beat.] It's okay for things to end, Isabel.

ISABEL: But they don't end. Look at them. [She looks to the painting.] You think you see it all in one glance, but at first you see what they want you to see. The way they present themselves to the world. But look long enough and there comes a moment when the truth becomes clear. We have radiography, infra-red, ways of looking so that virtually nothing in a work remains unseen to us. And yet six months after starting I saw it. I'd been working across the panel from left to right, each square inch under microscope-taking weeks. Brush strokes look like mountains. There: an inscription in the paint layer, made when the original paint was wet. 'The only preparation for marriage is marriage.' [Beat. With quiet tenderness] We made a world.

WILLIAM: We did.

ISABEL: We had some fun.

WILLIAM: We did.

ISABEL: We loved each other.

WILLIAM: Yes.

Beat.

ISABEL: 'You're not teaching us anything.' [Beat.] I said. I said, 'You're not teaching us anything'. Wasn't that it?

WILLIAM: No.

ISABEL: And you said, 'Miss Benson, you are deliberately sabotaging this'.

WILLIAM: Isabel. Don't do this.

ISABEL: I hated you. You were so pompous and you were vain and I hate vain men. [Beat.] There's something about young men calling young women 'Miss'. It always sounds like a piss-take. And later, I was walking home and I thought to myself, either I'm a pretentious little twat or I'm honest and maybe I'm honest and and you really weren't teaching us anything and if that's the case, you should be in awe of me, in absolute awe of me and therefore in love with me since smart men cannot help falling in love with women they are in awe of. You should be stalking me. You should be walking right behind me, walking behind me, following me not in some sinister way, but rather, because I see you. I see you. I'm clear about you. And being smart, you find that irresistible, that someone sees you clearly. Especially someone with really, really nice tits. [Beat.] But you weren't stalking me. I know. Because I looked. So then I went home and I was in my flat and I picked up the phone and I rang. [Beat. She waits.] So then I went home and I was in my flat and I picked up the phone and I rang. [Beat.] I picked up the phone and I rang.

He relents.

Flashback:

WILLIAM: Hello?

ISABEL: It's me. I think—

Beat.

WILLIAM: [reluctantly at first] What?

ISABEL: You should come over.

WILLIAM: What, now?

ISABEL: Yes.

WILLIAM: What, now?

ISABEL: Yes.

WILLIAM: So you can apologise?

ISABEL: No.

WILLIAM: You disrupted the class. You've done it before. You're irritating.

ISABEL: I know I am, but I think you should come over and take me.

Beat.

WILLIAM: 'Take' you?

ISABEL: Yes.

WILLIAM: Where?

ISABEL: As in 'ravish', you fool. Tess of the d'Urbervilles.

WILLIAM: No.

ISABEL: Go on.

WILLIAM: No. No. Are you mad?

ISABEL: Go on.

WILLIAM: I can't come over and... I can't come and... I'm a teacher and you're a student and it's completely inappropriate and besides which, I don't want to. Tess.

ISABEL: Why not?

WILLIAM: Because I don't like you.

ISABEL: Okay. All right.

WILLIAM: At all.

ISABEL: Okay. But listen, that's no reason not to ravish me. As we all know. Besides which, I don't want—

WILLIAM: What?

ISABEL: I don't—you know—

WILLIAM: No.

ISABEL: You know!

WILLIAM: What?

ISABEL: I don't want—

WILLIAM: You don't want—?

ISABEL: Bells and whistles.

WILLIAM: You don't want bells and whistles?

ISABEL: No.

WILLIAM: Well, that's handy, since as it happens I'm all out of bells and whistles—

ISABEL: Just a quick—you know. A roll in the hay. If we had any hay. Which we don't.

WILLIAM: Is this the way you usually find sexual gratification? Make someone very very annoyed and then harass them into servicing your lust?

ISABEL: Listen, Mister Drama Teacher, it's very simple. I'm inviting you over to fuck me.

WILLIAM: Lovely. How nice. Thank you.

ISABEL: You know, any ordinary man would be already ringing the fucking doorbell!

WILLIAM: Call me old-fashioned, but when it comes to performing intimate sexual acts, I prefer not to be brow-beaten.

ISABEL: This is the offer of a lifetime. You're the one who should be ringing me! You're the one who should be trying to seduce me. I'm the one who should be listening to you leave plaintive messages on my machine. I'm the one who should be ringing my girlfriends complaining about your unwanted advances. I'm the one who should start out totally despising you and then slowly, slowly be won over by you when you start singing bad pop songs outside my window or organising planes to sky-write 'Marry Me'. I'm the one who should come around to letting you have your way with me. That's the way it's always been done. The girl is persuaded. The boy persuades. [Beat.] Why won't you come?

WILLIAM: I told you, I don't like you.

ISABEL: What is it you don't like about me?

WILLIAM: You're annoying. You're a show-off. And you drive a Torana.

ISABEL: And?

WILLIAM: I'm scared.

ISABEL: What are you scared of?

WILLIAM: Everything.

ISABEL: That's not an answer.

WILLIAM: I'm scared of finding that your place is full of self-help books and old yoghurt. I'm scared that when I see you up close, your tits aren't that big after all. I'm scared that you seem interesting at a distance, but up close you're just weird, or even disturbed. I'm scared that all over your flat you've got blown-up photos of me going about my life unsuspecting and that you hate men because you're uncle molested you and I'm the one you've chosen to wreak revenge on. I'm scared you have AIDS. I'm scared you want a baby and you get pregnant and then I've suddenly got something with my DNA moving into the spare room that's never, ever going to move out. I'm scared your old boyfriend is a large, deranged crack-head. I'm scared that you're really appalling in bed and that you whistle 'I Am Woman' while your come. I'm scared that you're unbelievably hot in bed and I'm intimidated and realise that I'm shit ordinary. I'm scared you pray, or knit, or—or, make really horrible art out of old candles. I'm scared you're deluded about yourself and I can see it and I pity you. I'm scared you talk too much about Europe or New British Writing. I'm scared I might love you and then I'm totally fucked.

Beat.

ISABEL: What if I promise not to whistle? [Beat. Saucily] And then you came over.

WILLIAM: Yes I did.

ISABEL: You came over and you—

WILLIAM: Yes.

ISABEL: I showed you my etchings.

WILLIAM: You did.

ISABEL: You couldn't resist me, after all.

WILLIAM: 'Resist'? Mmm. 'Avoid', perhaps. You positioned yourself in the middle of my flight path. If I didn't bed you I was going to have to run you over.

ISABEL: You couldn't resist me!

WILLIAM: It was the absence of bad candle-art that clinched it. My aphrodisiac was gratitude.

ISABEL: When you first introduced me to Arthur, you were proud.

WILLIAM: I knew Arthur would like you. Yes, I was proud.

ISABEL: I was a 'class act'.

WILLIAM: My last girlfriend kept a packet of cigarettes under her t-shirt sleeve, so let's face it, anything was going to be an improvement.

ISABEL: You liked that I was from a 'good' family.

WILLIAM: You think I liked feeling you up because your mother wore pearls and cooked French sauces?

ISABEL: Yes. Yes. Her French sauces made me saucy. In a French way. You liked it because you thought that you were somehow smudging me. Grubbying me up. And that gave you a bit of a charge.

WILLIAM: Did it?

ISABEL: The affected open-mindedness of the educated upper middle class. It rocked you. It made you feel sophisticated.

WILLIAM: [correcting her] What I really liked, if you must know, was the way you swore. Ex private school girls have this way of swearing which is incredibly erotic. Those peachy, post-braces lip-glossed mouths used to curling themselves around school hymns, uttering naughty words.

ISABEL: The other thing you liked was that I didn't use sex as flattery. I didn't pretend you were pleasing me when you weren't, so when I was excited, I really was excited. You liked that.

WILLIAM: Not really. What women don't understand. What you lot don't really get is that we like it when you pretend. We prefer it when you pretend. It's so much more time efficient, for a start, than spending hours twiddling your knobs and getting nowhere. Just do your Oscar-winning number, thank you very much.

ISABEL: You definitely liked my stories.

WILLIAM: Fair enough. When it comes to pornographic anecdotes, you were the one.

ISABEL: You liked the way they revved me up. That made you excited...

WILLIAM: I did like the one about the suburbanites who invite the neighbours over for fondue. I tell you what, if the industry utilised your creative skills, there'd be a revolution in cheese consumption.

ISABEL: You also liked the one about the cinema.

WILLIAM: You can't go wrong with a cinema. You can't go wrong with a French maid. They're a dead cert.

ISABEL: Yes, but I had the detail. It can't be easy being a French maid when you're a German dog-walker.

WILLIAM: Vera's not a dog-walker.

ISABEL: Okay, sorry. The German actress with a Dalmatian, a Pomeranian, two Jack Russells and a Poodle.

WILLIAM: It's temporary. She is an actress.

ISABEL: So you don't want me to think she walks dogs but you don't mind me thinking she's German.

WILLIAM: She is German.

ISABEL: She wear a uniform, then? You always liked a woman in uniform.

WILLIAM: Only that one time.

ISABEL: I went to a great deal of effort. It wasn't just a matter of the outfit. I method acted. I was an Italian traffic cop.

WILLIAM: I know you were.

ISABEL: Se parcheggi davanti alla fontana di Trevi devi lascarti schiaffeggare al meno un po'. Non sono io a fare le regole.

WILLIAM: [memorised] 'If you park in front of the Trevi fountain, you're going to have to allow me to slap you around a little. I don't make the rules.' I admit, you were good.

ISABEL: It was destiny.

WILLIAM: 'It'?

ISABEL: We. Us. We were. It happened. Marjorie met Michael at a bus stop, had me, I went to that university, Theatre Studies. I hate Theatre Studies. I was only ever interested in art, but I had to choose an extra subject and suddenly there you were, pretending to be some kind of expert. Because you were a crap soccer player and a crap guitar player, you failed every audition and you had nothing left to be except a drama teacher. We came together. Destiny. We're preordained, baby.

WILLIAM: What about Vera? She was my destiny, next. Why shouldn't I respect that?

ISABEL: You two aren't destined.

WILLIAM: Oh. Oh. I see. You and I. We are. But she and I...

ISABEL: She's chosen. To render me invisible. She's not written into your story, from the start. She's a walking, talking conscious choice.

WILLIAM: Well, even if she is a choice, she's a good choice.

ISABEL: She's not good.

WILLIAM: Believe me, she's good.

ISABEL: Does she make you hard?

WILLIAM: As Rock.

ISABEL: How's her storytelling?

WILLIAM: Not as good as yours.

ISABEL: So.

WILLIAM: But she makes a really gorgeous noise when she comes. Sort of like a Norwegian air hostess eating a lychee.

ISABEL: [indignant] I can do that! You just never asked!

WILLIAM: Vera didn't need to be asked.

ISABEL: Do they watch?

WILLIAM: Who?

ISABEL: The two Jack Russells, the Pomeranian and the Poodle?

WILLIAM: No, but the Dalmatian fetches us the ciggies when it's all over.

ISABEL: If you're going to take up with an actress, why couldn't it be Catherine Zeta-Jones?

WILLIAM: Believe me, she has a face like a used tea bag first thing in the morning.

ISABEL: You've seen Catherine Zeta-Jones first thing in the morning!

WILLIAM: No comment.

ISABEL: How do you know?

WILLIAM: I know.

ISABEL: [absorbing] Is it true?

WILLIAM: No. But I've found that nothing makes a woman happier than hearing Catherine Zeta-Jones looks like a prawn cracker.

They smile.

Light change.

Flashback:

ISABEL: Hello. [She waits.] 'Hello', said you. Here you are.

WILLIAM: [reluctantly] I'm not sure why.

ISABEL: Disingenuous.

WILLIAM: Five syllables. That's four more than any word that's come out of your mouth all term.

ISABEL: I've been saving them up.

WILLIAM: For when?

ISABEL: For when you're standing on my doorstep. Looking—lugubrious.

WILLIAM: Nice.

ISABEL: Come in. Just be careful of my candle-wax sculptures of vaginas.

WILLIAM: Oh, shit.

ISABEL: I'm joking!

WILLIAM: Has anyone told you, you have an unusual way of signalling your availability?

ISABEL: For what?

WILLIAM: Well.

ISABEL: You've come to help me with my Pinter project, haven't you?

WILLIAM: [laughing] Your 'Pinter' project?

ISABEL: In class? You said you'd be happy to—Am I wrong?

WILLIAM: [confused] Your 'Pinter' project?

ISABEL: Harold Pinter British playwright 1937 dash 2008.

WILLIAM: [dawning on him, horribly] Your Pinter project?

ISABEL: Yes, I mean, that's why you're here, isn't it?

WILLIAM: Well—

ISABEL: Why else would you be here?

WILLIAM: [confused] Well—didn't we just have a phone conversation?

ISABEL: A phone conversation?

WILLIAM: Yes.

ISABEL: With me?

WILLIAM: You [now doubting] invited me over?

ISABEL: What?

WILLIAM: Just—?

ISABEL: When—?

WILLIAM: I'm sorry. I thought—

ISABEL: What? Not—?

WILLIAM: No!

ISABEL: Oh, my God! You didn't think—?

WILLIAM: Of course not!

ISABEL: You're my teacher! You could be sacked!

Beat as she lets him suffer. Then slowly she lifts her sweater up and off, revealing her bare breasts.

WILLIAM: You're horrible.

As he puts his hands on her breasts:

ISABEL: I know. But up close, they are big, aren't they?

Brief blackout.

Out of the darkness: the sound of ISABEL whistling 'I Am Woman'. Lights up.

Beat. Post coital.

WILLIAM: That is what I would call worthwhile.

ISABEL: Worthwhile?

WILLIAM: It's good to see finally that there's something you're good at.

ISABEL: Is that so?

WILLIAM: Well, you're an awful student, let's face it.

ISABEL: Irredeemable?

WILLIAM: I'm afraid so. But this. This you can do!

ISABEL: Well, thank you for the accolades.

WILLIAM: A definite A-minus.

Beat.

ISABEL: You're grading me?

WILLIAM: Habit.

Beat.

ISABEL: [unable to help herself] What's the minus for?

WILLIAM: Impertinence. All those directions: 'Faster, slower, right hand down, in a bit, in a bit'. I felt like I was trying to do a reverse park.

ISABEL: I'll try to improve.

They smile.

Anyway, I don't want to act. Why would I want to 'act'? I want to live! I'm dropping Drama at the end of the semester and doing the Conservation course.

WILLIAM: Good. Good choice. We'll miss you.

ISABEL: You'll be seeing quite a bit of me at the ethics tribunal. The one you'll be grilled at over bedding your comely students.

WILLIAM: Not plural.

ISABEL: That's your story. I do think your self-discovery workshops are complete rubbish, by the way.

WILLIAM: Oh, thanks!

ISABEL: And don't think you're a life changer.

WILLIAM: Life changer?

ISABEL: One of those teachers. You're not gifted.

WILLIAM: No. But as a drama teacher, I'm an excellent actor.

ISABEL: You're acting?

WILLIAM: Come on! The glasses. The well-timed explosions about 'mediocrity'. The jacket with the elbow patches.

ISABEL: I hate you.

WILLIAM: Hate's an ugly word.

ISABEL: Not as ugly as 'muesli'.

WILLIAM: True.

ISABEL: 'Muesli' is the ugliest word in the English language.

WILLIAM: Yet people still eat it. Interesting.

ISABEL: Don't you hate anyone?

WILLIAM: Only Deborah Kerr.

ISABEL: You hate Deborah Kerr?

WILLIAM: Have you ever really looked at her? Satan.

Beat.

ISABEL: Who is Deborah Kerr?

They smile.

WILLIAM: I'm too old for you.

ISABEL: You're not old.

WILLIAM: I'm appallingly, poignantly old. You only love me because I'm rich and powerful.

ISABEL: Funny.

WILLIAM: I'm so old I remember someone explaining this new thing called 'email'. Imagine that. One day my great grandchildren will reflect on that in stunned silence. It'll be like saying I had tea with the last Tsar before the revolution.

ISABEL: Fuck me again.

WILLIAM: Not again.

ISABEL: Again and again and again.

Light change.

Beat.

WILLIAM: Forty-nine.

ISABEL: You know, don't you, that sexually speaking, a woman only really wants that first tiny moment of being wanted? The sex itself is really... well, let's face it. Sex is utterly and completely overrated except for maybe three times in your life.

WILLIAM: What?

ISABEL: You don't agree?

WILLIAM: Come on! We were married! You were married to me.

ISABEL: Yes.

WILLIAM: And you didn't enjoy sex?

ISABEL: Yes. Yes. Of course I did. But you know, the act itself was secondary to being desired. A woman's sexual excitement is totally and completely controlled by how she is received.

WILLIAM: My God! Come back, Germaine, all is forgiven!

ISABEL: The look that passes from a lustful man to the object of his interest—that look is the female orgasm.

WILLIAM: So the other orgasm—what? Doesn't exist?

ISABEL: Oh, sure. It exists. But it's the punctuation, not the poetry.

WILLIAM: Not all women feel that way.

ISABEL: No. No. I'm sorry. All women feel that way.

WILLIAM: Vera doesn't feel that way.

ISABEL: [smugly] Ask her.

Anxious beat as he contemplates it.

WILLIAM: [hurt, shocked] You didn't enjoy sex with me?

ISABEL: At the start. But later, to be honest, you were just a little too genteel.

WILLIAM: What?

ISABEL: If a man reveals no hidden aspect of his character when making love, a woman always wonders what's there.

WILLIAM: I was too nice?

ISABEL: Women don't like their lovers too well-mannered. Otherwise, you might as well play cards.

WILLIAM: Sex with me was like playing cards?

ISABEL: I kept wondering: Who is he really? As if your most unruly self was just a little bit afraid. Didn't you feel that yourself?

WILLIAM: [shocked] I—No. No. [Beat.] Why didn't you tell me?

ISABEL: I couldn't shape you into the lover I wanted. Analysis kills desire. And does it matter? Really? I'm sure there were times we closed our eyes and I was your young Catherine Deneuve and you were my Jean-Claude Van Damme.

WILLIAM: [horrified] You thought of Jean-Claude Van Damme?

ISABEL: He was playing an art conservator in a new film and I was his adviser.

WILLIAM: And who was the casting agent? Mickey fucking Mouse? No-one would cast Jean-Claude Van Damme as an art conservator!

ISABEL: I would. And he adored me because none of his other girlfriends ate.

WILLIAM: You're wrong. I know how well we... I remember how deeply we... Not always, but at our best—yes. We were great...

ISABEL: [quietly] Were we?

WILLIAM: I... I loved sex with you.

ISABEL: Maybe your standards are just lower.

WILLIAM: Remember when we hiked—Cradle Mountain—when the storm hit and we—

ISABEL: Yes.

WILLIAM: That time after the thing in the place when they left—

ISABEL: Yes.

WILLIAM: And the French B and B, in the attic, with the dust mites and we—

ISABEL: Yes.

WILLIAM: Well?

ISABEL: What?

WILLIAM: [tenderly, caught in the memory] Well, that was wonderful. That was—wasn't that wonderful?

ISABEL: [with very quiet triumph] Yes.

Beat.

WILLIAM: Isabel.

ISABEL: William—

WILLIAM: I know what you're doing—

ISABEL: Do you?

WILLIAM: You think I'll—

ISABEL: Just—

WILLIAM: No. Please. It's over. I have a life, Isabel. That's not about you.

ISABEL: I guess, acting is a useful pursuit if you are sick of being yourself.

WILLIAM: Do you know what? I don't even remember who I am. And that gives me enormous pleasure. I am the actor. I'm 'that guy in that series'. I'm Mister Golden Artichoke and I'm happy for me.

ISABEL: And you're brilliant at it! I mean it. You do make the small screen big. At the same time as making real life small. You're a genius illusionist.

WILLIAM: I fell out of love.

ISABEL: And Vera? You love Vera of course.

WILLIAM: She's beautiful.

ISABEL: She's the kind of beautiful men think is beautiful and women know isn't really beautiful.

WILLIAM: Objectively, without any opinion involved at all, she's chronologically—young.

ISABEL: And you like young?

WILLIAM: I love it. What's not to like? Young's always good. We all like it.

ISABEL: And you love her?

WILLIAM: I'm marrying her on Sunday!

ISABEL: You love Vera?

WILLIAM: Her family's arriving in Paris. Laden with toasters.

ISABEL: You love her, then?

WILLIAM: Of course I love her!

ISABEL: [sharing rather than arguing] That's why you're standing here now. Here. In front of me. Three days before the wedding. Giving me my ninety. Because you're so in love. [Beat.] I pity her. Because one day, the real William is going to emerge. Mister Loquacious Talk Show Guest is going to turn into something real. There he is—the man who suavely joked his way through courtship, someone who famously, never allowed anything to really get to him—suddenly overwhelmed by the full savage burden of inexplicable life. He's tried to shake it off, but it will not let him go. The wife he left. The daughter he lost. All they felt for him and he for them, the dogged archive of a family. He's tried. He's run, fast. But whenever he tries to sleep, there it is, the memory of who he once was and who belonged to him. And one day, Vera is going to come back to the Georges Cinq, laden with shopping bags, and there he will be: A man who has spent his entire life denying the force of his emotions and suddenly: they've taken their revenge.

WILLIAM: Do emotions take revenge?

ISABEL: It's all they do.

WILLIAM: [angry] You're so certain, aren't you, Isabel?

ISABEL: You think you can pretend with me? With me? You went to hell once and you went there with me. I remind you of hell. And she comes along. She's pretty, she's impressed by you and she's never been to hell. Love? Love, is it?

WILLIAM: [furious] Yes. And, I tell you what. Something else I love about Vera. [Beat.] She's never had a child. [Beat.] I love that. Women who've had children: they become more interesting at the same time as less compelling. They've glimpsed their own redundancy. They give birth and something in them dies: the sexuality of their own importance. Men love that. Just so you know.

Beat as she takes in the brutality of this.

ISABEL: And what about you? For her? How long are you going to be dazzling to her?

WILLIAM: You think I'm going to analyse passion? With you?

ISABEL: You're right. Passion doesn't last long enough to explain.

Beat. WILLIAM moves towards the door.

WILLIAM: I'd love to stay and all that. Discuss art. Replay old records. Tear each other to shreds. But I should get going. Getting married, as I am. In another hemisphere. And all that.

ISABEL: No!

WILLIAM: I'm off. Have a wonderful life. Send me a postcard in about fifteen years. From St Barths. I'm sure it will be back in by then.

ISABEL: The car's not coming for another forty minutes.

WILLIAM: I think you'll find. If you look. That the car is there.

ISABEL: [alarmed] He's waiting?

WILLIAM: He's reading Proust. So I'm sure he'll be ready for an interruption.

ISABEL: [distraught, but trying to stay calm] William, you promised me.

WILLIAM: It's a funny old world, isn't it? When your driver reads Proust?

ISABEL: [with growing desperation] You promised me. You said—you promised me. You promised me, William. You promised me. William. William. William. Ninety. You said. You said. You gave me ninety.

Beat.

WILLIAM: [relenting] Forty-one left, then I get my plane. Because I'm getting married. On Sunday.

Beat. He sits down again.

ISABEL: You didn't propose to me at Adolpho's.

WILLIAM: No.

ISABEL: Unfortunately. You took advantage—

WILLIAM: Well, that's what I do. Let's be realistic.

ISABEL: I was a captive audience.

The sound of recorded applause.

Flashback:

WILLIAM bows towards ISABEL.

WILLIAM: Ladies and gentlemen. Thank you... Thank you... Thanks for attending tonight's performance. Before you go, however, I wanted to ask the young lady in the floral dress and nice breasts sitting in D16 if she'd marry me.

Beat.

ISABEL: What?

WILLIAM: Isabel Louise Benson. [Peering into the lights] Are you there?

ISABEL: No!

WILLIAM: Will you marry me?

ISABEL: [putting on a funny voice] She's not here. She's gone home!

WILLIAM: Will you? Isabel? Will you marry me? [Beat. Pompously] Will you be my wife?

ISABEL: [to herself] Jesus Christ! [Yelling] No!

WILLIAM: What?

ISABEL: No!

WILLIAM: You won't marry me?

ISABEL: Not now.

WILLIAM: I thought you'd like it. I thought it would be a cute anecdote you could tell the grandchildren.

ISABEL: I don't want a cute anecdote. I want someone wild and brilliant and terrifying.

WILLIAM: But that's me! I'm actually deeply terrifying. I'm dark and menacing. I'm a melancholic genius. I hate cute anecdotes! I'm a brooding alcoholic weirdo. I read... Dostoyevsky. In Russian. Every night. I rage about the vacuousness of the modern condition. I keep a knife under my pillow and I never laugh. Come on... come on... marry me. I'll put my DNA on good behaviour. [Beat.] Will you?

Beat.

ISABEL: [softening] Maybe.

Beat.

WILLIAM: Maybe? [Beat.] What about the fat lady in the beanie in F24? Doing anything for the rest of your life?

ISABEL: [terse] Oh, all right!

Applause.

Light change.

Beat. They smile.

We're late.

Light change.

Flashback:

WILLIAM: I really think I need more training. It's a delicate operation in a notoriously dangerous combat zone with major security issues and an enemy who takes no prisoners. I'm going in alone and underprepared.

ISABEL: My parents are actually quite nice.

WILLIAM: Your father reminds me of Himmler.

ISABEL: Nice.

WILLIAM: It's the eyes.

ISABEL: Try not to use that as your opening gambit.

WILLIAM: [delaying] Isabel, Isabel, Isabel. 'It must have been cold there in my shadow.'

ISABEL: Where?

WILLIAM: 'To never have sunlight on your face.'

ISABEL: What?

WILLIAM: 'You were content to let me shine, that's your way.'

ISABEL: What on earth are you talking about? Are you drunk?

WILLIAM: 'You always walked a step behind.'

ISABEL: Behind who?

WILLIAM: [breaking into singing] 'Did you ever know that you're my hero, and everything I would like to be? I can fly higher than an eagle, for you are the wind beneath my wings.'

ISABEL: [smiling] Well, that's all very well, but I don't really want to be your wind.

WILLIAM: [heartfelt] I love you.

ISABEL: [dismissive, but touched] Oh yes, yes, yes...

WILLIAM: I just know your father is going to ask me a trick question. 'Who was the more popular male writer: George Eliot or Henry Handel Richardson?' Something to prove my complete and utter inadequacy. And then he'll ask me to sniff the wine and I'm going to have to come up with something like 'fruity bouquet' or 'tinges of blackberry'.

ISABEL: You know what, let's not go—

WILLIAM: Don't be ridiculous.

ISABEL: I've changed my mind. I don't want to marry you.

WILLIAM: Oh, that's what they all say.

She laughs.

ISABEL: I want you to know the only reason I agreed was out of pity.

WILLIAM: I know, but, sadly, it's the best offer I'm likely to get. Also I have a thing for art history types, as you know. It's so grown-up. It's so velvet-robed, pale-skinned, intellectual. It's so fancypants. [Beat.] They'll hate me.

ISABEL: They'll love you—

WILLIAM: No, they won't.

ISABEL: No, they won't. But they'll respect my right to marry you.

WILLIAM: No, they won't—

ISABEL: Well, no they won't, but I'll marry you anyway.

WILLIAM: Rebel.

ISABEL: Inciter.

Light change.

The weight of the memory affects her.

[Quietly and building] It's not enough, is it? One life is not—

WILLIAM: What?

ISABEL: Not—

WILLIAM: What?

ISABEL: Enough.

WILLIAM: One life is not enough?

ISABEL: You gather experience blind. You think: At some point, I'll understand how things are done: loving, learning, parenting, fucking. At some point surely I'll know how to do them well. Then one day as you're walking into the newsagency on a spring afternoon, you realise that now you know. Somehow life has gathered about you and it's registered. You're not a newcomer anymore. You look at young people and they suddenly seem young. They annoy you. They don't understand how much they don't know with their piercings and their knee-jerk anti-authoritarianism. You want to say: Grow up! Start reading the Property Sections, start procreating, show some tenderness towards your parents. Grow Up! Like me. And then suddenly, you feel the low-down deep ache of loss. You've gained wisdom, but other things are vanishing from you. Your own raw capacity for discovery. Things don't startle you, anymore. The swift sense of outrage at injustice or unkindness—it's over. You've become a shrugger. You've been around the block. You've survived the worst that is survivable and now, nothing really excites you. There's nothing evangelical about your talents. No lust to make your imprint on the world. You're a known quantity. And faintly, faintly, through the hum of your own inner whitegoods, your functioning internal appliances: humour, confidence, intelligence, through the hum of those reliable furnishings is a small penetrating alarm that you cannot silence. It will not be silenced. And then, before you even realise, it has captivated you. The longing to be new again! To unlearn! To jettison all the wisdom, the catalogue of recriminations, mischance, regret, failed choices, uncontrolled outcomes—all of it. Get rid of it! And find, in some sweet-faced other, the opportunity to begin again. [Beat.] She is entirely of the moment.

WILLIAM: All right. She is. She is the moment.

ISABEL: And us?

WILLIAM: We were the glorious moment and then our moment vanished.

ISABEL: And history?

WILLIAM: I don't want history. I want to be brutally alive.

They lock eyes. Long beat.

And what about you, Isabel? Any moments—? In all this time—?

ISABEL: No.

WILLIAM: No? Surely—?

ISABEL: There was—

WILLIAM: [surprised, not in a good way] Oh?

ISABEL: A brief—

WILLIAM: There was? That's great.

ISABEL: A brief—

WILLIAM: Oh yes, encounter. Why don't you ever hear marriage described as a long encounter? Do encounters have to be brief?

ISABEL: There was some—

WILLIAM: Was there?

ISABEL: Interest. But I wasn't interested. In the end.

WILLIAM: In him?

ISABEL: In being interesting.

WILLIAM: Shame. Who was he?

ISABEL: He loved me.

WILLIAM: Did he?

ISABEL: I believe he did. You could tell in the way that he—

WILLIAM: What?

ISABEL: Touched—

WILLIAM: Really? Well, it sounds good. You're too fussy, that's your problem. Who was he?

ISABEL: No-one you... [beat] like. It felt good to be loved. In your wake.

WILLIAM: Happy for you. You needed that.

ISABEL: It seems so unfair. These men—it's as if they trail men like you. The lovers and the leavers. They realise that's their place, to come in where you vacate.

WILLIAM: Works for everyone.

ISABEL: Except, disgustingly, most women would rather be left dazzlingly than worshipped tenderly.

WILLIAM: What did he do?

ISABEL: He was in journalism.

WILLIAM: Like Arthur. A handsome hack. What area?

Beat.

ISABEL: Sports.

WILLIAM: Huh! Like Arthur. [Beat.] What was his name?

ISABEL: Arthur.

Long beat.

WILLIAM: You had an affair with my brother?

ISABEL: Well, I always wanted to.

WILLIAM: What?

ISABEL: But somehow, it didn't seem right... while I was married to you.

WILLIAM: Isn't that funny? [Beat.] Are you sure it was Arthur?

ISABEL: He's incredibly sexy. It's something to do with the freckles and the sports thing. Men who are into sports... it's just so boyish. It's such a happy pursuit. Because it's so meaningless and temporary. One week their club is number one, the next week they're losers, and on it goes. A bowl of pasta and a match and the odd intimate act. Those men... they have it all over the nicely turned-out intellectuals who take a girl out to dinner and talk about how Martin Amis has 'gone off'. You always thought you were so superior to Arthur because you were arty, never realising that women flipped for him.

WILLIAM: Women flipped for Arthur?

ISABEL: I used to have this sexual fantasy that you leant me to him.

WILLIAM: What?

ISABEL: He dropped in at the house late one night and you noticed the way he looked at me and you said: Go ahead. Take my wife.

WILLIAM: Take my wife?

ISABEL: And he took me upstairs to our bedroom while you sat downstairs watching Vanya on 42nd Street. Making notes.

Beat.

WILLIAM: How? How then?

ISABEL: A year ago, I bumped into Arthur at the theatre. Waiting for Godot done by Canadians. The kind of thing you once got excited about, before you went all Who Weekly.

WILLIAM: That's so typical! So you. Famous for your loyalty. Pious. Pale. Lovely. Faithful to the last. But once you choose infidelity, it's with my sibling! Jesus, Isabel, I wouldn't have slept with your sister!

ISABEL: Only because I don't have a sister.

WILLIAM: If you did. Why brief encounter?

ISABEL: Oh. Well. He's modest, Arthur. And you know I never really go for modest.

WILLIAM: Is that so?

ISABEL: No. I like a certain amount of self-delusion in a man. It's so entertaining.

WILLIAM: And you didn't have that with Arthur?

ISABEL: He's rigorously self-aware. Far too smart. And he could make observations on ordinary things that would make me cry.

WILLIAM: He'd make you cry?

ISABEL: Yes—you know—about the drycleaner's face or a teenage girl standing at a railway crossing [Beat.] And of course, he knew Bea.

WILLIAM: Yes.

ISABEL: William, you weren't there.

WILLIAM: No.

ISABEL: And he was.

WILLIAM: Yes.

ISABEL: You both sweep your hair off your face the same way. You both like pecan pie and hate snow peas. He was the you you have when you don't have you.

WILLIAM: All this time I thought it was specifically me you liked. I didn't realise it was just a general attraction to the family gene pool.

ISABEL: Unnerved you, have I?

WILLIAM: Not at all. It's just I'm—I thought this was all about how you couldn't get over me. The great love. And all that.

ISABEL: [angry] Is that it, William? There's always one in a couple, isn't there? Who cares more about what they trigger than what they feel.

WILLIAM: [incensed] Isabel. Whatever happened afterwards, I loved! I lay beside you, passionately, faithfully. I loved you frantically.

ISABEL: Well, if you loved me so much, why the fuck did you go?

Beat. Intense. Silent.

It wasn't Arthur I wanted, was it? It was the best version of you. [Beat.] The William who had lightness and joy. Who stood on the roof of parliament and sang to me. Who bought me twenty-nine blow-up pelicans and put them on my lawn on my birthday. Who had some fantastic irreverent soundtrack to world events that lit up conversation like a flare. [Beat.] You were an original. There was no-one quite like you. When I kissed you, you tasted of Camel cigarettes and mint and I thought: There's only one and he's mine.

Beat, he's affected deeply.

February twenty-fifth at six p.m.

WILLIAM: Do you have to?

ISABEL: Ivory silk and sandals.

WILLIAM: Isabel.

ISABEL: I was very simple and unaffected before everyone got simple and unaffected.

WILLIAM: Let's leave it alone.

ISABEL: Your shirt matched... We matched. Your speech to me was...

WILLIAM: [laughing]... All the important things that happened on February twenty-fifth.

ISABEL: The day the world record was set for a snowmobile, the day the Nicaraguans voted out the Sandinistas, the day Buddy Holly recorded 'That'll Be the Day', the day Hitler got German citizenship, the day the 'insanity plea' was first used to prove innocence, the day Cassius Clay defeated Sonny Liston, the day Pammy Anderson had Tommy Lee arrested and the day we got married.

WILLIAM: You got drunk. You were very drunk when we got on the flight.

ISABEL: You need to be for Alitalia. They advise you. When you book.

WILLIAM: We arrived in Rome at five a.m. We nearly froze to death waiting for a hotel room.

ISABEL: We took the cab straight from Fiumicino to the Pantheon. We stood in front of it.

WILLIAM: It must have been minus something.

ISABEL: We held each other. I had a ring. We were married. It was the Pantheon. We cried.

Beat as they remember.

Light change.

Flashback:

It's the Pantheon.

WILLIAM: The biggest dome in the world.

ISABEL: It's the Pantheon. We're standing in front of it.

WILLIAM: It's the Pantheon.

ISABEL: Here we are.

WILLIAM: The Pantheon!

A moment of huge tenderness:

ISABEL: Husband.

WILLIAM: Wife.

ISABEL: [breaking the moment] It's fucking freezing and we're married.

WILLIAM: We're married.

ISABEL: We're married!

WILLIAM: How the fuck did that happen?

ISABEL: You stood on a stage and humiliated me in public.

WILLIAM: You should have another coat on. You're going to catch a cold.

ISABEL: Who cares? We're married. Colds aren't a problem anymore. Nothing's a problem. If you asked me to I'd take off all my clothes right now. I'd dance a jig. I'd eat squid ink pasta without cutlery. I'd do anything for you.

WILLIAM: You were so drunk on the plane, I made a resolution about when we got home.

ISABEL: What was that?

WILLIAM: I'd divorce you. [Beat.] Dipsomaniac.

ISABEL: Buy me a cappuccino? My stomach's ice.

WILLIAM: Well, we're here for twelve days and unfortunately we can only afford three coffees. If you want the first now, I suppose you can. But don't come crawling back to me after the third.

ISABEL: Sadist.

WILLIAM: Glutton.

Light change.

ISABEL: It was when they first computerised credit cards. We were over the limit. The only places we could eat were the ones that still had the manual machines.

WILLIAM: Poverty and Caravaggios.

ISABEL: We seemed to be in a perpetual state of excitement. What were we excited about? In those days?

WILLIAM: Our potential.

ISABEL: Ah yes. 'Young people's wealth'.

WILLIAM: Frankly, I think it's overrated. There are certain things it's really a pleasure to leave behind. Lentils. Boz Scaggs. Potential. Far better to jettison it. Unnecessary ballast. Let it wash up on the shores of someone else's youth.

ISABEL: So that's what we were excited about. Potential.

WILLIAM: And pizza.

ISABEL: Oh yes, not forgetting pizza.

WILLIAM: And sex.

ISABEL: That place that opened onto the street near the Piazza Navona. Potato and rosemary, hot in our hands. We didn't have any money. I don't know how we did it.

WILLIAM: You bludgeoned me. As usual.

ISABEL: I said to you: I Have To Go to Rome for My Honeymoon, and somehow we did.

WILLIAM: Goethe said: The only preparation for Rome is Rome.

Beat.

ISABEL: That was before we were tattooed by life. It was all ahead. We talked about having a child. You said: Let's hope it has my looks and your brains.

WILLIAM: Or failing that, your looks and brains and my knees. Because my knees are really extraordinarily good. I used to be a knee model.
You can laugh. But I was in hot demand by sock makers.

Light change.

Flashback:

Hello you.

ISABEL: Hello you.

WILLIAM: That was sneaky. Going into labour while I was out of town.

ISABEL: Frankly, the idea of you in the labour suite was frightening. I think the contractions were entirely opportunistic.

WILLIAM: It was—?

ISABEL: Oh, lovely. I tried very hard to commune with the primal journey, the spiritual significance of new life etcetera etcetera but all I could really think about was how much I wanted to kill you. You'd think, to even things up a bit, that a female orgasm would last twenty-seven hours.

WILLIAM: [with huge tenderness] Genius.

They smile. He looks at the baby.

She's beautiful. She's like a tiny... squashed... wrinkled... hairless... purple version of you.

ISABEL: Beatrice Alice, meet your father.

Long silence. They are overcome.

WILLIAM: As I was in the cab from the airport, angels started singing.

ISABEL: Really?

WILLIAM: Absolutely. They had teeny-tiny trumpets. Lightning flashed and then the skies turned blue. Gold dust floated down over the city, did you see it?

ISABEL: Perhaps I did.

WILLIAM: Tides stopped. Dogs in suburban kennels started howling. Soap operas on telly were interrupted by newsflashes. Trains came to a halt in their tunnels. School children looked amazed out of their classroom windows at the trumpeting angels, atheists paused irritably at the provocation, coffee machines gurgled to a stop, traffic lights flashed amber, morning radio hosts stopped their stupid commentaries, ordinary civilians ran out onto the streets and fell to their knees. Something in the Amazon happened with butterflies and dead crops in Ecuador sprang green roots. And [looking at ISABEL] it's all [beat] your [beat] fault.

Light change.

WILLIAM is affected by the memory.

I'd forgotten I remembered that.

Beat.

ISABEL: It's a tricky little thing, sex. Isn't it? Do it properly and you never have time to do it again.

WILLIAM: You were brave.

ISABEL: I was so brave. It seemed so weird to me, that I had invented something that was partly you. [Touched] What a trick that is.

They smile.

WILLIAM: Everything went swimmingly until you went to Aarhus for the conference. From that point on, I was sinking.

ISABEL: It was only for a week!

WILLIAM: If it had actually been documented, I'd have been on the cover of the Sunday supplements. I'd be on the inspirational speaking circuit of survivors, like those mountaineers who cut off their own arms.

ISABEL: You do realise that is the reason women accept invitations to conferences? Simply for the pleasure of reducing their men to a state of utter fatigue-related collapse just so they know.

WILLIAM: Yes, actually. I did realise that. I think I rang you, sobbing.

Light change.

Flashback:

[Fast] I mixed it the way you said to. I did it just the way you said to and she started to take it and then she stopped and she wouldn't take it and then she took it. I put her in the outfit with the butterflies that Joanie gave her, the one you told me to, and I put her in the car seat but I couldn't get the strap to go in the fucking slot. It was like it was jammed, it wouldn't click, it was going in and not clicking and she was crying. I was there about twenty minutes and she was crying the whole time and finally I got it in, I was sweating like a pig, and I started the car and we were two hours late and we were just at the intersection and then she vomited. She vomited over everything, the outfit, the capsule. I'd forgotten the nappy bag anyway, so I had to go back to the house and take her in again and wipe her down and re-dress her and this time I just put her in the ugly pink towelling thing because I couldn't be fucked and then we went through the whole thing again and then we got to Alice's and you could see that Ted was pissed off I was so late even though I'd told them not to wait, they'd waited and then she wouldn't settle. It didn't matter what I did. She was either hungry or thirsty or tired or sick or missing you. She could be teething. She could have reflux. Ted said she's just a baby and babies do that and finally, I just gave up and decided there was no point staying for dinner if she was going to scream her head off so we came home. I was so tired I nearly ran off the road. And she screamed the entire way home like there was a pin sticking into her, this high-pitched hysterical kind of scream, it was like an insane woman's scream and it just kept going I'm surprised you didn't hear it from your fucking Scandinavian hotel suite. And then I mixed up the powdered stuff and I used the teeny-tiny spoon you told me to but she kept chucking it up and then I put her down and I'm not kidding, I kid you not, I tried the rocking, I tried the three little ducks the way you told me to, I tried Old Macdonald, I tried the Mister Whispers tape, I tried the in-utero noise tape, I tried Peter Paul and Mary, I tried silence, I tried the light on, I tried the light off, I tried elevating the mattress, I tried the night light, I tried the Babar music box, I tried 'Eensy Weensy Spider', I tried the Captain and Tenille and finally she nodded off to ACDC. So I fell into bed and I felt like I was going to die and I was just falling into that deep sleep when she woke up. She woke up and then she vomited. All over the cot and the carpet and the little chair. It's was like three square metres of regurgitated baby formula and rice cereal and so I cleaned it up with the stuff you told me to use and I wiped her down with the other stuff you told me to use and not the other stuff the one you told me not to use and then I changed her and the sheet and then I put her down and the whole thing started again and listen to me, I now know why people throw their children out of windows, they're not bad people! They're not evil people! They're just tired people, just horribly horribly tired people and I know it's pathetic and I know it must seem stupid but I'm so depressed and exhausted and miserable and lonely.

ISABEL: I can't believe you put her in the ugly pink towelling thing!

Beat.

WILLIAM: That's it?

ISABEL laughs.

Light change.

You laughed.

ISABEL: I laughed?

WILLIAM: From the hot tub you were sharing with some pasty art historian from some shit college in Wisconsin.

ISABEL: Oh yes... that sleek, tanned art historian from Yale... the one who read me haikus.

WILLIAM: I know you're lying because no art historian in the history of the world has ever been tanned.

ISABEL: He was the one who said, famously, that 'a beautiful woman should never be viewed under anything but candlelight'.

WILLIAM: No wonder you came home.

ISABEL: A woman hears a line like that and self control goes right out the window.

WILLIAM: As we know.

ISABEL: [with longing and tenderness] Then, she started sleeping. Everybody slept. For a year. And when we woke up, it was all good. Did we stop? For a second? Did we stand there on the street, in the park, at the supermarket? Did we ever stop, that year, and look at what we had? The three of us. For just a moment. [Beat.] If only you could photograph the unexceptional. Because it's so exceptional.

WILLIAM: We were, weren't we? We were happy. For a time there?

ISABEL: Yes.

WILLIAM: When I got the job?

ISABEL: Yes.

WILLIAM: I came home from the trip. You were standing in the kitchen.
I walked in. With a snow dome.

Light change.

Flashback:

Now this is art.

ISABEL: How nice. The Hollywood sign. In snow.

WILLIAM: You can have your fucking Velázquezes.

ISABEL: I'm not sure the plural of Velázquez is Velázquezes. It's like sheep. Or squid. One squid, two squid.

WILLIAM: Possibly the first art conservator to compare Velázquez to calamari.

WILLIAM starts dancing.

ISABEL: You got it?

WILLIAM: I got it.

ISABEL: We're rich!

WILLIAM: It will get me 'noticed', as they say. Max says it's bound to make a splash. That director. And it's heart-rending.

ISABEL: Is it?

WILLIAM: It didn't render my heart, as a matter of fact. But who's not compelled by the tale of an eight-year-old Ecuadorian refugee in need of a heart transplant who's adopted by a dying American doctor?

ISABEL: And you are—

WILLIAM: The dying American doctor's... best friend—

ISABEL: Not the hero?

WILLIAM: Well, actually, I am the hero. Because I persuade the dying American doctor to adopt the Ecuadorian eight-year-old and find him a heart.

ISABEL: That's it?

WILLIAM: I end up screwing the widow.

ISABEL: In a tasteful way.

They smile.

WILLIAM: Tell me life isn't strange.

ISABEL: Max must be—

WILLIAM: Happy. He's a happy agent. The happiest.

They are holding each other around the waist, looking at each other.

ISABEL: Hey.

WILLIAM: Hey. [Beat.] Didn't I tell you I'd come good?

They kiss.

ISABEL: The second roof guy came. Three thousand more. Something to do with the addition. They didn't allow for something around the chimney. It has to have privets or rivets or crumpets or something. So I called the ones Ruth said were good and they're coming on Thursday. My mother rang. She's meeting up with Trevor and Elly in the Dordogne to eat at some whizz-bang place it takes four years to get into but Elly's cousin supplies them with ducks. The book arrived. The roses are out.

WILLIAM: Is she asleep?

ISABEL: Sneak in.

WILLIAM: Mention me?

ISABEL: Often. I'm making boring pasta but tomorrow we go to Adolpho's. You star.

Light change.

Beat.

WILLIAM: [transfixed by the thought, but knowing] Can I sneak in?

ISABEL: She's gone.

WILLIAM: [with longing] Sneak in. A single glance. A tiny glance. I won't wake her up.

ISABEL: She's gone.

WILLIAM: One look. Just a look.

ISABEL: She's gone. The room is gone.

WILLIAM: What?

ISABEL: There's an old printer in there. And a futon. Otherwise, it's bare.

WILLIAM: It's bare?

ISABEL: Yes.

WILLIAM: And her stuff?

ISABEL: Gone.

WILLIAM: All of it.

ISABEL: Every single thing.

WILLIAM: What?

ISABEL: When you didn't come. April twenty-fifth. I just—I got rid of it.

WILLIAM: [disbelieving] You got rid of it?

ISABEL: I waited for you. And you didn't come and something... happened.

WILLIAM: What?

ISABEL: Something. Broke. In hours, it was gone.

WILLIAM: There's nothing left?

ISABEL: Not a thing. Not a single thing. Not a nightie. Not a teddy. Photos, I've kept. A baby book with the measurements I couldn't throw away. They're in the coat cupboard. But all the rest is gone.

WILLIAM: You shouldn't have done that.

ISABEL: You didn't want them.

WILLIAM: You shouldn't have done that!

ISABEL: [distraught] I was the keeper of the flame. Perhaps there has to be one in every marriage. The one who stays conscious of the deeper things, pays mind to them. The other likes freedom from sentiment, memory, hates being hostage to them but needs the other to be the historian. I've been yours for five years now, William. Keeping the flame for both of us. That's enough. I'm letting her go. No more hoarding the bric-a-brac of Bea. [Beat. Thinking as she speaks, occurring to her for the first time the argument could be put in this way] Tell me something. If we could have lived a life without Bea at all, without her ever existing, would you have wanted that?

WILLIAM: But we can't.

ISABEL: Just pretend. For a second. Never to have known her. None of the suffering. None of the horror. But none of the happiness, either. No Bea. Would you choose that, William?

WILLIAM: [deeply affected] It's a terrible question.

ISABEL: Would you choose never to have had her?

The full force of ISABEL's argument for love is contained in this answer:

WILLIAM: [realising] No.

He is devastated. Long beat.

ISABEL: [with love] William...

WILLIAM: Even with all of it... with all of it... No. Isabel... it was worth it.

ISABEL: Yes.

Beat.

WILLIAM: All these years... I did keep one image...

ISABEL: You did?

WILLIAM: From before Bea got sick. It was autumn and cold. I came home. Happy. I walked into the room, taking off my jacket, and looked across at you, feeding Bea in the chair.

Flashback:

WILLIAM looks at her gravely.

[Suddenly, beaming] Hello, dear ones!

ISABEL: 'Hello, dear ones,' you said. Bea broke off, arched her back, looked up at you. Her hand reached out to touch your gravelly face, smiling as if to say: Papa. You said:

WILLIAM: I'm opening some wine. Fine wine. To celebrate.

ISABEL: To celebrate what?

WILLIAM: To celebrate the moment, this moment.

WILLIAM and ISABEL look at each other. They are on the verge of kissing, but it's ambiguous whether it's then or now. He kisses her, long, tender.

A perfectly good moment. Better than that. [He opens the bottle and pours the wine.] Drink it slowly. It's not every day we have a bottle that costs eight dollars.

ISABEL: [with love not sentiment] Provider.

WILLIAM: Madonna. [Beat.] Let's go to bed early. Let's eat in bed. Let's eat takeaway in bed. Naked. And watch anything with Harrison Ford.

ISABEL: Or Jean-Claude Van Damme.

Light change.

You kissed me.

Beat.

WILLIAM: Here we are.

ISABEL: You said:

WILLIAM: Here we are. Three.

ISABEL: The doctor with the hair, our lovely doctor. He said: 'We'll have to operate and see what we can find'. That night, we went home to the cold house. We both of us wanted to lie alone—the first sign. But you turned to me, you took me up, you said to me:

WILLIAM: Isabel.

ISABEL: I won't forget it, what you said.

WILLIAM: We conceive children so rashly, drunk on recklessness.

ISABEL: Drunk on recklessness, you said. Yes, I said. That's the whole trick of the continuance of the species. You don't realise the terror of child-having until it's too late. We were in the waiting room. Coffee from a machine. Old women's magazines. We'd seen Bea go in. Our baby girl in a white gown, tied at the back. Who knew they made them that small?

WILLIAM: Her dear little face, astonished, looking up at us as the blue-swathed nurses wheeled her away.

Long silence, appalled, stricken, captivated by the memory.

ISABEL: Everything only we knew. Bea and who she was and what the world would be minus.

WILLIAM: Then the nurse called us.

ISABEL: I felt such pity for her. To be the bearer of such news. I started to cry for the awfulness of her job.

WILLIAM: Yes.

Beat.

ISABEL: And then... the day we were to bury her... I woke up and you were on a plane. I wanted to kill you, but only because I wanted to be you.

WILLIAM: Isabel—

ISABEL: It's all right.

WILLIAM: I...

ISABEL: I know.

WILLIAM: I couldn't stay.

ISABEL: I know.

WILLIAM: [distraught] Isabel—I—I—I couldn't say—these years—I couldn't find a way to say... But in my own way... I felt what you... I felt what you... But somewhere it could not... be spoken. And even... yes... Sometimes I envied you that you could turn those feelings into words. I envied you that. It seemed to me that no words could ever summon what... that words wouldn't do. I looked to you—somehow you found a way. Your anniversaries. The way you made containers out of days... whereas I... could only feel this jangling terror that could not be named or it would... consume me... Consume me. [Long beat. He sobs.] I wanted, sometimes, to pick up the phone, in the dead of night and call you and say: Help me. I'll help you if you help me. But if I started... if I started... how would I stop? Better keep it silent... keep it distant... and maybe I can just hold on, stave it off, until I disappear myself...

ISABEL crosses to the devastated WILLIAM and touches him. He turns to embrace her. She holds him, as he calms his sobbing. Then she looks up, over him, to the painting. Beat.

ISABEL: [indicating the couple in the painting and gradually standing and moving over to it] Look at them. Growing clearer. Slowly, the yellow varnish comes off, layer by layer. Who were they? Young, they were hopeful. They imagined something for themselves: a house, a child, a garden where the child would play. And then, what? The unruly detail of life got in their way. And did love stay? Did it persist against the odds?

ISABEL looks across to him. They lock eyes.

WILLIAM: There is no preparation for marriage but marriage.

ISABEL takes the watch which has been slipped over the top of the easel and looks at it.

ISABEL: Oh, look. Five seconds. Five. Four. Three. Two.

Blackout.

THE END

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaBook


I have an Outlook 2013 Task folder which sync's with a SharePoint List.
Sometimes when that SharePoint List is updated (primarily via MS Project 2013 Pro which also sync's to the same SharePoint List) the tasks duplicate in the Outlook Task list view.
BTW, tried switching off Exchange Caching but that didn't stop the issue. Seems the Offline items are created regardless.
The trouble is I can't find anything on how perform that Clear Offline Items using VBA.
Would appreciate any help anyone is able to provide on how to solve this one.


text:
Q: how to get html text differences like svn? I am using PEAR text_diff class to get comparison of text. It works correct for plain text, but when I try to compare text with HTML tags, It gives wrong result
is there any way to compare two HTML blocks and in result display text that pre-serv its HTML and show differences like svn

A: I'm not sure which OS you're on, but I always use Meld on Ubuntu for diff:ing non-versioned files. It doesn't have any problems diffing HTML code (or anything else afaik):
http://meldmerge.org/

A: In my experience, these two are fantastic:

*

*https://github.com/cygri/htmldiff (Python)

*http://www.w3.org/People/Bos/#jpegxmp (C, must be compiled)

Yes, none of the programs are written in plain PHP. You just run them via PHP:
// Python script:
$html_diff = shell_exec ('python /path/to/htmldiff version1.html version2.html');
// C program:
$html_diff = shell_exec ('/path/to/htmldiff --start-delete="" --end-delete="" --start-insert="" --end-insert="" version1.html version2.html');

Since they aren't written in PHP, you can enjoy the incredible high speed :)

A: You can do this right in javascript itself. Check out google-diff-match-patch.
Diff demo here.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


Recently I was doing some net surfing to pass the time, and ended up visiting a number of sites related to the hobby of keeping pigeons.
While city dwellers may look at the common pigeon as little more than a flying rat, pigeon hobbyists raise a rather diverse range of breeds with huge diversity in the look of the birds, and what purpose they were originally bred for.
As an example, the homing pigeon, derived from the wild rock pigeon as almost all pigeon breeds are, has been selectively bred for its ability to find its way home over extremely long distances.
The sport of flying homing pigeons was well-established as early as 3,000 years ago, and since then the bird has been used as a messenger during wars, and as a postal carrier.
Its usefulness is the result of selective breeding for centuries.
But the homing pigeon looks very little like its cousins the pouter breeds of pigeons, or the fantails and they fly nothing like the acrobatic tumblers.
It was in the midst of my online delve into pigeons that it struck me how genetically modified the pigeon is. Hobbyists through hundreds and hundreds of years have selected breeding stock based on natural mutations, particular looks and colour patterns, and have bred for those things, diverging pigeons into dozens of distinct breeds, many appearing little like their cousins.
Farmers have changed the cow over the centuries too. The dairy breeds such as Holsteins are a considerably different animal than a common beef breed such as the Hereford. Herefords are quite different from the diminutive Dexter.
And then there are double-muscled breeds such as Belgian Blues which are quite different even among beef breeds.
The double-muscled breeds are interesting in that a picture of a deeply muscled bull of one of the breeds occasionally gets posted to social media with a resulting outcry from some about it being a GMO (genetically modified organism.) The connotation of course being that GMO is bad.
There are certainly concerns in the public about GMO today, relating to the science of taking a trait from one species and implanting it in another.
But in reality we have been genetically modifying species for centuries. Farmers have played their role, as in the example of the cattle above, and in crops such as triticale or tayberries.
Triticale is a hybrid of wheat and rye first bred in laboratories during the late 19th century in Scotland and Germany, while the Tayberry is a cross between a blackberry and a red raspberry created in 1979.
However, the modification of species over the years by selective breeding by, and for farmers, pales rather quickly in comparison to that of hobbyists.
But more of that is what has turned out to be a two-part review of my thoughts.


text:
Q: Split a string by awk and print everything but the last two splits I have a string /home/lamma/local-blast/termitomycesBGI/short_reads/F19FTSEUHT1394.IC0035-2A_1.fq.gz
and I am using awk to split the string:
echo  /home/lamma/local-blast/termitomycesBGI/short_reads/F19FTSEUHT1394.IC0035-2A.fasta.gz | awk -F'.[^.]*$' '{ print $1 }'

Which returns:
/home/lamma/local-blast/termitomycesBGI/short_reads/F19FTSEUHT1394.IC0035-2A.fasta

But  want it to return:
/home/lamma/local-blast/termitomycesBGI/short_reads/F19FTSEUHT1394.IC0035-2A

How do I do this?

A: Could you please try following. You could use Parameter expansion of bash.
val="/home/lamma/local-blast/termitomycesBGI/short_reads/F19FTSEUHT1394.IC0035-2A.fq.gz"
echo "${val%_*}"

Output will be as follows.
/home/lamma/local-blast/termitomycesBGI/short_reads/F19FTSEUHT1394.IC0035-2A

EDIT: As per anubhava sir's comments, in case variable has . itself then try following using rev + awk solution.
echo "$val" | rev | awk 'BEGIN{FS=OFS="."} {$1=$2="";sub(/^\.+/,"");print $0}' | rev

EDIT2: Adding a sed + rev solution.
echo "$val" | rev | sed 's/[^.]*.[^.]*.\(.*\)/\1/' | rev

A:
Split a string by awk and print everything but the last two splits

You may use this awk:
awk 'BEGIN{FS=OFS="."} {$NF=$(NF-1)=""; NF-=2} 1' <<< '/home/lamma/local-blast/termitomycesBGI/short_reads/F19FTSEUHT1394.IC0035-2A.fasta.gz'

/home/lamma/local-blast/termitomycesBGI/short_reads/F19FTSEUHT1394.IC0035-2A


Music is an important part of life, which is why a multi-room audio system is possibly one of the most appealing home improvements you can make. Multi-room audio allows you to listen to the music you like, exactly when and how you like it. No matter which room you're in, you can enjoy top-quality music from a hard drive or online music store such as Spotify. Not only is multi-room audio extremely convenient, it also provides plenty of opportunities to benefit from extremely high-calibre speakers and play equipment that mean your sound quality is absolutely exquisite.
The music quality is exceptional – the speakers we install are some of the best on the market, providing an exceptional level of sound quality.
Music can be controlled from your SMART phone or laptop. There's no need to fiddle about with remote controls or wall units in order to get the exact effect that you want.
An audio system saves room: if you're plagued by cables and boxes, you'll enjoy the simplicity and space-saving nature of an integral audio system. Speakers can be built into walls and ceilings; wires can be concealed. If necessary, we can make it appear as if your music operates by magic! In addition to interior speakers, we also have the capability to install outdoor speakers, giving your barbecue or other outdoor entertainment a welcome boost.
We are an experienced team that's dedicated to providing every household we work with a stunning solution to their audio needs. If you value the opportunity to enjoy premium audio in any and potentially every room in your home, for far less than you might imagine, we are delighted to help. Call us to find out more about our services and to tell us what you're looking for.


text:
Q: How do I declare a default constructor for sub-class of abstract class? The following doesn't work for me in Java. Eclipse complains that there is no such constructor. I've added the constructor to the sub-class to get around it, but is there another way to do what I'm trying to do?
public abstract class Foo {
    String mText;

    public Foo(String text) {
        mText = text;
    }
}

public class Bar extends Foo {

}

Foo foo = new Foo("foo");

A: You can't instantiate Foo since it's abstract.
Instead, Bar needs a constructor which calls the super(String) constructor.
e.g.
public Bar(String text) {
   super(text);
}

Here I'm passing the text string through to the super constructor. But you could do (for instance):
public Bar() {
   super(DEFAULT_TEXT);
}

The super() construct needs to be the first statement in the subclass constructor.

A: You can't instantiate from an abstract class and that's what you are trying here. Are you sure that you didn't mean:
Bar b = new Bar("hello");

???


text:
Ricky Skaggs Reveals Quadruple Bypass Heart Surgery: 'I Had to Address It'
Shannon Finney, Getty Images
Ricky Skaggs says he is feeling "150% better" after undergoing quadruple bypass heart surgery in Nashville in June.
The Country Music Hall of Famer tells People that he knew something was wrong for more than six months preceding the routine medical checkup that led to his surgery. He'd felt a tightness in his chest and shortness of breath in the months prior to his diagnosis, but even so, he admits, when his doctors advised that he undergo an angiogram after a six-month health checkup yielded concerning results, he nearly decided to put it off for a week since he and his wife, Sharon White, were slated to visit their son, Luke, and his wife Rosemary as they got ready for the birth of their son.
"Scripture tells us God always knows the thoughts of man," the 66-year-old entertainer tells People. "That was proven to me at that moment, because while I did not speak it from my mouth, I thought about putting the angiogram off for a week. When I thought that thought, it was like I saw the Lord with a jeweler's eye glass on. He was peering at me but never said a word. But just by His look, I knew He was saying, 'Absolutely no.' It put the fear of God in me. He had given me so many grace situations, but He was serious that I needed to take care of this now."
Skaggs ended up having surgery just four days later at Centennial Medical Center in Nashville, and he spent four more days in the hospital, surrounded by his wife and their daughters, Molly and Mandy, before returning home. In retrospect, he realizes that his forced time at home in 2020 due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic turned out to be a good thing.
"I have thanked the Lord hundreds of times that I wasn't out in the middle of Texas on a tour bus, miles away from a hospital," Skaggs states. "It was a major blessing I didn't have a heart attack. Nothing was hurt, and nothing was destroyed or irreparable. It was just by the mercy and grace of God that all of this happened in this way."
Skaggs says that God was trying to give him subtle warnings about his health for the entire first half of 2020 leading up to his surgery. He kept receiving Life Line Screening letters in his mailbox, his friend Amy Grant underwent surgery to address a congenital heart condition and his sister-in-law, Cheryl White Jones, suffered a mini-stroke on the same day he had his six-month checkup.
"I knew that I couldn't stand in the shadows of my heart situation anymore," the 15-time Grammy Award-winning country musician says. "I had been fearful of a heart attack or getting a stent put in all of this time, but now, I was in a corner. I had to address it."
Skaggs was staggered by a conversation he had with his surgeon, Dr. Sreekumar "Kumar" Subramanian, after his surgery on June 15.
"He told me that when he was finished with the bypasses, he literally was holding my heart in his hand, and my heart literally leapt in his hands when the blood started flowing through it again," the country legend relates tearfully. "I just started bawling. It was the most incredible thing I have ever heard in my life."
He adds that the surgery has given him a new lease on life. He can walk without getting winded now, and he's been working to strengthen his heart. Skaggs returned to the stage of the Grand Ole Opry in September, just days before welcoming his new grandson, Lyric.
"Don't put off tomorrow what you can do today," Skaggs reflects. "That surgery gave me a brand-new heart. Not only a real heart, but a spiritual heart that has now been cleaned out, so I can hear Him better than ever before."
Country Stars Who Have Suffered Terrible Tragedy
Source: Ricky Skaggs Reveals Quadruple Bypass Heart Surgery: 'I Had to Address It'
Filed Under: Ricky Skaggs


text:
A. Lange & Söhne's best known timepiece celebrates 25 years with jubilee edition
INTERNATIONALNEW PRODUCTSNEWS by Alex Douglas	on January 11, 2019
A. Lange & Söhne is celebrating 25 years of its best known timepiece with a 'Jubilee' edition.
The Lange 1 was launched in 1994 and the German-based manufactory is making the most of its anniversary with a special edition release of the award winning watch.
Limited to 250 pieces, the 25th Anniversary edition comes in white gold and has a deep-blue printed argenté dial with a re-cess, blue date numerals, a hinged cuvette with an engraving of Lange's headquarters and a hand-engraved balance cock with blued lines.
The piece is powered by in-house caliber L121.1, a movement manually wound, decorated and assembled by hand and precision-adjusted in five positions.
When fully wound, the watch, which is set in a 38.5mm diameter case, has a power reserve of 72 hours and comes with an alligator leather dark, blue strap.
As part of the announcement, A. Lange & Söhne described October 24 1994, the original release date of the Lange 1, as 'the most important day' in the firm's recent history, due to it being the day company founder Walter Lange and his partner Günter Blümlein presented the first four new-era wristwatches at the Dresden Palace.
The company believes the move put it back on the map of international watchmaking, making 2019 a year they want to use to celebrate.
Tags : a lange & sohneanniversarywalter lange
Richemont revenues rise by 24% in fourth quarter of 2018
Gilet Jaune protests hit luxury jewellery and watch sales for Richemont in France
The author Alex Douglas
A. Lange & Söhne unleashes a £24,900 steel sports watch
German military watch dating from 1942 to go under the hammer at Fellow's auction
A. Lange & Söhne makes limited edition Little Lange 1 Moon Phase
A. Lange & Söhne spotlights the sixth of 12 limited edition watches for its Lange 1 anniversary year
Watch brands bypassing retail partners are beginning to wise-up and jewellers are pushing back


Wow and only 31 bottles made.
Bottle 12 out of 31. Seriously tastes like capri sun. Sweet sour cherry, plum? Amazing!
Joseph is drinking a F. H. Steinbart Collaboration by Reverend Nat's Hard Cider at Larrys?
Wow this one was crazy. Thanks Eric!
Stoked that Adam brought this to us. First time for me drinking from a proper bottle.
Best cider I have ever had. Thanks for the invite Glen and Mandie!