So?
DAVE: He said I should get any job that would enable me to keep a wife and two children, and in this way I would be integrated into society. [he flings himself down on the carpet] Anna, for God’s sake, Anna.
ANNA: Don’t ask me.
DAVE: Why not? I can’t ask Dr Anstey. Because the significant moment I keep coming back to he wouldn’t see at all. It wasn’t the moment I decided to leave America. I drove right across the States, looking up all my friends, the kids who’d been world-challengers with me. They were all married. Some of them were divorced, of course, but that’s merely an incident in the process of being married. They all had houses, cars, jobs, families. They were not pleased to see me – they knew I was still unintegrated. I asked each one a simple question. Hey, man, I said, this great country of ours, it’s in no too healthy a state. What are we going to do about it? And do you know what they said?
ANNA: Don’t rock the boat.
DAVE: You’ve got it in one, kid. But I had one ace up my sleeve. There was my old buddy, Jedd. He’ll still be right in there, fighting. So I walked into his apartment where he was sitting with his brand new second wife. There was a nervous silence. Then he said: Are you successful yet, Dave? And so I took the first boat over.
ANNA: And the wife and the two well-spaced kids?
DAVE: You know I can’t get married. You know that if I could I’d marry you. And perhaps I should marry you. How about it?
ANNA: No. The wedding would be the last I’d see of you – you’d be off across the world like a dog with a fire-cracker tied to its tail.
DAVE: I know. So I can’t get married. [a pause] Why don’t you just trap me into it? Perhaps I need simply to be tied down?
ANNA: No.
DAVE: Why not?
ANNA: Any man I have stays with me, voluntarily, because he wants to, without ties.
DAVE: Your bloody pride is more important to you than what I need.
ANNA: Don’t beat me up.
DAVE: I will if I want. You’re my woman so if I feel like beating you up I will. And you can fight back … Anna what are you being enigmatic about? All the time, there’s something in the air, that’s not being said. What is it?
ANNA: Not being said, I keep trying. Don’t you really know.
DAVE [in a panic]: No. What?
ANNA: If I told you, you’d say I was just imagining it. All right, I’ll try again, Janet Stevens.
DAVE [furious]: You’re a monomaniac. Janet Stevens. Do you imagine that a nice little middle-class girl, whose poppa’s sort of sub-manager for an insurance company, do you imagine she can mean anything to me?
ANNA: Oh my God, Dave.
DAVE: You’re crazy. It’s you that’s crazy.
ANNA: Dave, while you’re banging and crashing about the world, playing this role and that role, filling your life full of significant moments – there are other people in the world … hell, what’s the use of talking to you. [a pause] As a matter of interest, and this is a purely abstract question, suppose you married Janet Stevens, what would you have to do?
DAVE: Anna, are you crazy? Can you see me? God help me, I’m a member of that ever-increasing and honourable company, the world’s ex-patriates. Like you, Anna.
ANNA: Oh, all right.
DAVE: How the hell could I marry her? She wouldn’t under-stand a word I ever said, for a start.
ANNA: Oh all right.
DAVE: ‘There’s no point at all in discussing it.’
ANNA: None at all.
DAVE: I said to Dr Melville Cooper-Anstey: This society you want me to be integrated with, do you approve of it? If you don’t, what are you doing, sitting there with those big black scissors cutting people into shapes to fit it? Well, doc, I’ll tell you something, I don’t approve of society, it stinks. I don’t want to fit into it, I want society to fit itself to me – I’ll make a deal with you, doc, I’ll come and lie on this comfortable couch of yours, Tuesdays and Fridays from 2 to 3 for seven years, on condition that at the end of that time society is a place fit for Dave Miller to live in. How’s that for a proposition doc? Because of course that means you’ll have to join the Dave Miller fraternity for changing the world. You join my organization and I’ll join yours. [he turns on ANNA] Hey, Anna, don’t just lie there, reserving judgment.
ANNA: I didn’t say a word.
DAVE: You never have to. You’re like Dr Melville Cooper-Anstey – you put your spiritual fingertips together and purse your lips.
ANNA [furious]: Dave do you know something – when you need an enemy, you turn me into a kind of – lady welfare worker. Who was the great enemy of your childhood? The lady welfare worker. [jumping up – in Australian] I’m Anna MacClure the daughter of a second-hand car dealer. My grand-father was a horse-doctor. My great-grand-father was a stock farmer. And my great-great-grand-father was a convict, shipped from this our mother country God bless her to populate the outback. I’m the great-great-grand-daughter of a convict, I’m the aristocracy so don’t get at me, Dave Miller, corner-boy, street-gang-leader – I’m as good as you are, any day. [he pulls her down on to the carpet, she pushes his hands away] No. I told you, no.
DAVE [swinging her round to sit by him. His arms round her]: OK then baby, we don’t have to make love. Like hell we don’t. OK sit quiet and hold my hand. Do you love me, Anna?
ANNA: Love you? You are me. [mocking] You are the flame, the promise and the enchantment. You are for me – what Janet Stevens is for you. [she laughs] Imagine it Dave Miller, for you the flame is embodied in a succession of well-conducted young ladies, each one more banal than the last. For me – it’s you. [suddenly serious] You are my soul.
DAVE [holding her down beside him]: If I’m your soul, then surely it’s in order to sit beside me?
[They sit, arms round each other, ANNA’S head on his shoulder.]
ANNA: I only breathe freely when I’m with you.
DAVE [complacent]: I know.
ANNA [furious]: What do you mean? I was on the point of getting married.
DAVE: Don’t be absurd.
ANNA: What’s going to become of us?
DAVE: Perhaps I shall go back to Dr Melville Cooper-Anstey – like hell.
ANNA: It’s not fair to take it out of Dr Melville Cooper-Anstey just because he isn’t God.
DAVE: Of course it’s fair. If God wasn’t dead I wouldn’t be going to Dr Melville Cooper-Anstey. Perhaps I should wrestle with him – after all, these people have what’s the word? Stability.
ANNA: Stability.
