Ha—some Communists you are!
Overheard by MAX, coming from indoors. He’s nearly fifty-one, a bruiser.
MAX Go to bed, you … flower child.
ESME I’d like to go to Prague, poke flowers into the ends of their gun barrels.
JAN I’m glad I saw you, Esme.
ESME Peace and love, Jan. I want to give you something to take.
JAN What something?
ESME I don’t know. Come and see before you go. Will you?
JAN Yes.
ESME In case you die. Peace and love, Pa.
MAX Wouldn’t that be nice? Keep your pop groups down, Mum’s just managed to get off.
ESME (mocks) ‘Pop groups …’
She goes into the house.
MAX (uncharmed) Sweet sixteen.
JAN So. Some sunny day. Thank you.
Jan hesitates, starts to go. Max turns dangerous.
MAX Sovereignty was never the point. You know that.
JAN (cautious, calming) Okay.
MAX Being Czech, being Russian—German, Polish—fine, vive la différence, but going it alone is going against the alliance, you know this.
JAN Okay.
MAX It’s comfort and joy to capitalism, comfort and joy, and your bloody Dubcek did this, not the Soviets—I speak as one who’s kicked in the guts by nine-tenths of anything you can tell me about Soviet Russia.
JAN Why have you stayed in the Party?
MAX Because of the tenth, because they made the revolution and no one else.
JAN So okay.
MAX Prague bloody Spring? It was never about the workers.
JAN (Okay.)
MAX No, it’s not okay, you little squit. I picked you out. I put my thumbprint on your forehead. I said, ‘You. I’ll take you,’ because you were serious and you knew your Marx … and at the first flutter of a Czech flag you cut and run like an old woman still in love with Masaryk.
JAN Dubcek is a Communist.
MAX (roused) No—I’m a Communist, I’d be a Communist with Russian tanks parked in King’s Parade, you mummy’s boy.
JAN (insists) A reform Communist.
MAX Like a nun who gives blow-jobs is a reform nun. I have to walk this off. Tell Esme to wait up for me, in case Eleanor wakes. Then fuck off back to Prague. I’m sorry about the tanks.
Blackout and ‘I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight’ by Bob Dylan.
Smash cut into bright day in the same place, with Max there and ELEANOR already speaking. She is in her late forties. She sits at a garden table. She has her work with her.
ELEANOR He said you knew him, he was a friend of Jan.
MAX (catching up) He was Czech.
ELEANOR He said to tell you Jan wasn’t coming back, he asked for his things …
MAX Who asked?
ELEANOR Milos. Milan. I was a bit thrown at the time because I opened the door to him without my falsy and didn’t catch on till he kept staring at my face—he daren’t drop his eyes, it scared him. Doesn’t she know she’s only got one tit? I should keep a bow and arrow handy to put people at their ease—yes, it’s toxophily, the big T, irreversible, thank you, no sacrifice is too great.
Max silenced, to her name.
MAX Eleanor.
ELEANOR He was sucking on a lozenge, he offered me one, gazing into my eyes and breathing eucalyptus at me like a koala caught in the headlights.
Max perhaps touches her face.
MAX He was probably staring for the same reason as me the first time I … It was never your, your breast, it was always your face. I love your face.
ELEANOR You loved my tits, that’s why breasts is plural.
MAX It makes no difference, you know.
ELEANOR Well, it does to me!
MAX Yes—yes, of course it does, I only meant … you know, it makes no (difference).
He makes to hold her, Eleanor fights him off, tearfully angry.
ELEANOR If it makes no difference, Max, you don’t have to stop making love to me from behind, it’s all right—all right?
Suddenly infreefall, they clutch, competing in apology and comfort.
MAX (finally) My Amazon. Just don’t lose half your bum, that’s all.
She wipes her eyes, fails at a laugh, blows her nose.
ELEANOR I had Amazons in my doctorate … false etymologies. Mazos, a breast; amazos, breastless. It makes sense if you’re Greek, but the Amazons weren’t Greek and didn’t speak Greek, so I said the one-breast thing was a language glitch and quite late—nothing about being a tit short in Homer, only killer feminists all round, and vase painters did two-breasted Amazons—case proved, done and dusted. And now this. It makes you wonder. Anyway, I’ve got my Sapphist showing up …
MAX (protests) You’re on sick leave.
ELEANOR So she’s coming here, (a quick kiss) It’s all right now.
MAX Eleanor. Um, why did he ask you, the eucalyptuslozenge man?
ELEANOR You weren’t here.
MAX Why would I be here?
ELEANOR Oh, and someone from BBC Radio—
MAX
