It’s nice I know for Katey to see you. She hasn’t many friends.
ANNA She has you.
DEELEY She hasn’t made many friends, although there’s been every opportunity for her to do so.
ANNA Perhaps she has all she wants.
DEELEY She lacks curiosity.
ANNA Perhaps she’s happy.
Pause
KATE Are you talking about me?
DEELEY Yes.
ANNA She was always a dreamer.
DEELEY She likes taking long walks. All that. You know. Raincoat on. Off down the lane, hands deep in pockets. All that kind of thing.
Anna turns to look at Kate.
ANNA Yes.
DEELEY Sometimes I take her face in my hands and look at it.
ANNA Really?
DEELEY Yes, I look at it, holding it in my hands. Then I kind of let it go, take my hands away, leave it floating.
KATE My head is quite fixed. I have it on.
DEELEY (To Anna.) It just floats away.
ANNA She was always a dreamer.
Anna sits.
Sometimes, walking, in the park, I’d say to her, you’re dreaming, you’re dreaming, wake up, what are you dreaming? and she’d look round at me, flicking her hair, and look at me as if I were part of her dream.
Pause
One day she said to me, I’ve slept through Friday. No you haven’t, I said, what do you mean? I’ve slept right through Friday, she said. But today is Friday, I said, it’s been Friday all day, it’s now Friday night, you haven’t slept through Friday. Yes I have, she said, I’ve slept right through it, today is Saturday.
DEELEY You mean she literally didn’t know what day it was?
ANNA No.
KATE Yes I did. It was Saturday.
Pause
DEELEY What month are we in?
KATE September.
Pause
DEELEY We’re forcing her to think. We must see you more often. You’re a healthy influence.
ANNA But she was always a charming companion.
DEELEY Fun to live with?
ANNA Delightful.
DEELEY Lovely to look at, delightful to know.
ANNA Ah, those songs. We used to play them, all of them, all the time, late at night, lying on the floor, lovely old things. Sometimes I’d look at her face, but she was quite unaware of my gaze.
DEELEY Gaze?
ANNA What?
DEELEY The word gaze. Don’t hear it very often.
ANNA Yes, quite unaware of it. She was totally absorbed.
DEELEY In Lovely to look at, delightful to know?
KATE (To Anna.) I don’t know that song. Did we have it?
DEELEY (Singing, to Kate.) You’re lovely to look at, delightful to know . . .
ANNA Oh we did. Yes, of course. We had them all.
DEELEY (Singing.) Blue moon, I see you standing alone . . .
ANNA (Singing.) The way you comb your hair . . .
DEELEY (Singing.) Oh no they can’t take that away from me . . .
ANNA (Singing.) Oh but you’re lovely, with your smile so warm . . .
DEELEY (Singing.) I’ve got a woman crazy for me. She’s funny that way.
Slight pause
ANNA (Singing.) You are the promised kiss of springtime . . .
DEELEY (Singing.) And someday I’ll know that moment divine, When all the things you are, are mine!
Slight pause
| ANNA (Singing.) | I get no kick from champagne, |
| Mere alcohol doesn’t thrill me at all, | |
| So tell me why should it be true— |
DEELEY (Singing.) That I get a kick out of you?
Pause
| ANNA (Singing.) | They asked me how I knew |
| My true love was true, | |
| I of course replied, | |
| Something here inside | |
| Cannot be denied. |
DEELEY (Singing.) When a lovely flame dies . . .
ANNA (Singing.) Smoke gets in your eyes.
Pause
DEELEY (Singing.) The sigh of midnight trains in empty stations . . .
Pause
ANNA (Singing.) The park at evening when the bell has sounded . . .
Pause
DEELEY (Singing.) The smile of Garbo and the scent of roses . . .
ANNA (Singing.) The waiters whistling as the last bar closes . . .
DEELEY (Singing.) Oh, how the ghost of you clings . . .
Pause
They don’t make them like that any more.
Silence
What happened to me was this. I popped into a fleapit to see Odd Man Out. Some bloody awful summer afternoon, walking in no direction. I remember thinking there was something familiar about the neighbourhood and suddenly recalled that it was in this very neighbourhood that my father bought me my first tricycle, the only tricycle in fact I ever possessed. Anyway, there was the bicycle shop and there was this fleapit showing Odd Man Out and there were two usherettes standing in the foyer and one of them was stroking her breasts and the other one was saying ‘dirty bitch’ and the one stroking her breasts was saying ‘mmnnn’ with a very sensual relish and smiling at her fellow usherette, so I marched in on this excruciatingly hot summer afternoon in the middle of nowhere and watched Odd Man Out and thought Robert Newton was fantastic. And I still think he was fantastic. And I would commit murder for him, even now. And there was only one other person in the cinema, one other person in the whole of the whole cinema, and there she is. And there she was, very dim, very still, placed more or less I would say at the dead centre of the auditorium. I was off centre
