The Living Room Read online

ROSE: You are worrying, just like yesterday. What is the matter?

  MICHAEL: Only a damned sense of responsibility. Listen, Rose, this is serious. Have you really thought …?

  ROSE: I don’t want to think. You know about things, I don’t.

  Darling, I’ve never been in love before. You have.

  MICHAEL: Have I?

  ROSE: Your wife.

  MICHAEL: Oh, yes.

  ROSE: You know the way around. Tell me what to do. I’ll do it. I’ve packed my bag, but I’ll unpack it if you want it a different way. I’ll do anything, darling, that’s easier for you. Tell me to come to Regal Court, now, this minute, and I’ll come.

  MICHAEL: Regal Court?

  ROSE: It’s where people go to make love. So everybody says. I’ll go there now and come back here. I’ll meet you there every day. Or I’ll take my bag and go away with you—for years.

  MICHAEL: Only years?

  ROSE: Just say what you want. I’m awfully obedient.

  MICHAEL: Dear, it’s not only you and me … you have to think.

  ROSE: Don’t make me think. I warned you not to make me think. I don’t know about things. They’ll all get at me if they have a chance. They’ll say, ‘Did you ever consider this? Did you ever consider that?’ Please don’t do that to me too—not yet. Just tell me what to do.

  MICHAEL: You are very dear to me.

  ROSE: Of course. I know.

  MICHAEL: I don’t want you to make a mistake.

  ROSE: A mistake wouldn’t matter so much. There’s plenty of time …

  MICHAEL: ‘You’re not a cruel man’ your uncle said to me. I don’t know much about the young. I’ve caused a lot of trouble in the last few weeks, breaking in …

  ROSE: And haven’t I? Dear, don’t worry so. Worries bring worries, my nurse used to say. Let’s both give up thinking for a month, and then it will be too late.

  MICHAEL: I wish I could.

  ROSE: But you can.

  MICHAEL: You can live in the moment because the past is so small and the future so vast. I’ve got a small future, I can easily imagine—even your uncle can imagine it for me. And the past is a very long time and full of things to remember.

  ROSE: You weren’t so horribly wise yesterday.

  MICHAEL: Put up with my ‘wisdom’.

  ROSE: Of course. If I have to. [Shutting her case] Shall we go?

  MICHAEL: I have to go home first—and say good-bye.

  ROSE: That’s hard for you.

  MICHAEL [harshly]: Don’t waste your sympathy on me.

  After all these years she had the right to feel secure.

  ROSE: I’m sorry.

  MICHAEL: Oh, it’s not you I’m angry with. I’m angry with all the world who think one doesn’t care …

  ROSE: You won’t let her talk you round, will you?

  MICHAEL: NO.

  ROSE: She’s had you so long. She’ll have all the right words to use. I only know the wrong ones.

  MICHAEL: You don’t need words. You’re young. And the young always win in the end. [He draws her to him.]

  ROSE: Where shall we meet?

  MICHAEL: Lancaster Gate Station, in an hour.

  ROSE [she is worried by his reserve]: You do still want me?

  MICHAEL: Yes.

  ROSE: I mean, like yesterday?

  MICHAEL: I still want you in just the same way.

  ROSE: I wasn’t much good, but I’m learning awfully fast.

  MICHAEL: You’ve nothing to fear. [He kisses her.] You’ve got the whole future.

  ROSE: I only want one as long as yours.

  MICHAEL [going]: In an hour.

  ROSE: Good-bye, my heart!

  [MICHAEL goes.

  ROSE closes her suitcase, then goes to the window. She tries to peer out between the bars, then climbs on a chair to see better. TERESA enters and crosses the room to the bathroom. As the door closes HELEN comes in, sees the suitcase and stops. ROSE turns.]

  HELEN: I hope you are not opening the window, dear?

  ROSE [obeying]: I’m sorry, Aunt Helen. [She crosses the room and picks up her suitcase.]

  HELEN: Where are you going?

  ROSE: To say good-bye to Uncle James.

  [HELEN sits down heavily in a chair.]

  It was very wrong of you to tell me Michael had gone away. I nearly missed him. I’ll be back to say good-bye to Aunt Teresa. [She goes out.]

  [HELEN sits silent in the chair. She puts her fingers to the corners of her eyes and gets rid of the few tears that have formed.]

  [TERESA opens the closet door and comes out.]

  HELEN [imperiously]: Teresa! She’s going away. We’ve got to stop her.

  [TERESA pays her no attention and tries to cross the room. HELEN bars her way.]

  Oh, don’t be absurd, Teresa. Don’t keep up your tomfoolery now.

  [TERESA evades her and goes out.]

  Teresa!

  [After a moment TERESA re-enters.]

  TERESA: Did you call me, Helen?

  HELEN: You heard what I said—[a sudden doubt]— or didn’t you?

  TERESA: I’ve been in James’s room. How could I hear?

  HELEN [furiously]: You’ve been there—[pointing at the closet]—pretending not to be seen again.

  TERESA: Oh no, dear, you’re imagining things.

  HELEN: Do you really mean to tell me … Are you feeling quite well, Teresa?

  TERESA: I think so, Helen. Was there something you wanted to talk to me about?

  HELEN: Sit down, Teresa. You know when you came in just now, you walked a little crookedly. Like ten years ago when the doctor said …

  TERESA [in fear]: I don’t remember what he said.

  HELEN: He said you had to be very, very careful.

  TERESA [whimpering]: I have been, Helen.

  HELEN: He said …

  TERESA [imploring]: I don’t want to hear. I don’t want to hear.

  HELEN: Shall I read you some of the ‘Little Flower?’

  TERESA: But you only do that when I’m ill, Helen. Am I ill? Really ill? [She sits down.]

  HELEN [sits beside her]: Did you feel a little faint when you got up?

  [TERESA licks her lips a little with apprehension.]

  TERESA: Perhaps, Helen. For a while.

  HELEN: Any headache, dear?

  TERESA: I don’t think so. A very little one.

  HELEN: And your heart?

  TERESA: It’s beating rather. Helen, you don’t think …?

  HELEN: Of course not. But we have to be very careful at our age. You’ll go to bed, dear, won’t you?

  TERESA: But I don’t want to be a trouble, Helen. It’s my cooking day tomorrow. There’s no one to help you in the evening when Mary leaves.

  HELEN: There’s Rose now, dear. Rose would help, wouldn’t she? She’s a good child. She wouldn’t leave us if she knew we were in trouble. I’ll call her now and we’ll put you to bed.

  TERESA: But Helen, I hate my bed. Couldn’t I just rest in here?

  HELEN [lowering her voice]: But you remember our agreement?

  TERESA: I can’t hear what you are saying, dear.

  HELEN: You seem a little deaf this morning. Your hearing comes and goes. See if you can stand up, Teresa.

  TERESA: Of course I can stand up. [She gets to her feet with difficulty and collapses again in her chair.]

  HELEN: Come to bed, dear. Rose and I will look after you.

  TERESA [imploringly]: Please, Helen …

  HELEN: You’ve got such a pretty bedroom, dear. I tell you what. I’ll send Mary to Burns Oates to get you another holy picture for that patch on the wall where Mother’s portrait used to hang. Would you like another ‘Little Flower?’

  TERESA: I’d rather have St Vincent de Paul. But Helen …

  HELEN: In a few days you’ll be up and about again.

  TERESA [desolately]: Days?

  HELEN: Come, dear. You’ll see you can’t walk by yourself. Try.

  TERESA: I can. I really can. [he rises care
fully to her feet and takes a step.]

  HELEN: Careful, dear. Take my arm.

  TERESA: No. No.

  [With a frightened cry TERESA draws away and collapses on to a chair. HELEN goes to the door and calls ‘Rose! Rose!’ It isn’t real fear in her voice, TERESA takes some tottering steps towards the sofa and falls on the floor. When HELEN turns and sees her sister, she feels panic.]

  HELEN: Teresa. Dear Teresa. Speak to me. Please. Teresa!

  [She bends down and for a moment it looks as though she is going to try to drag her sister through the door. Then she runs through the door on to the landing and cries in real fear.] Rose! Rose! Please Rose! Help me, Rose! Help me!

  CURTAIN

  Act Two

  SCENE ONE

  The Living Room. Early evening, three weeks later.

  [TERESA BROWNE is sitting in an easy chair with a rug tucked round her knees. FATHER BROWNE sits beside her in his wheeled chair. He is reading aloud to her.]

  JAMES [reading]:

  Upon that lucky night

  In secrecy, inscrutable to sight,

  I went without discerning

  And with no other light

  Except for that which in my heart was burning.

  It lit and led me through

  More certain than the light of noonday clear

  To where One waited near

  Whose presence well I knew,

  There where no other presence might appear.

  Oh night that was my guide!

  Oh darkness dearer than the morning’s pride.

  [JAMES suddenly stops.]

  TERESA: Go on a little longer. I like what you read so much better than what Helen reads. I don’t understand it, but I like it. She always reads me St Therese. She talks about my ‘Little Flower’, but it’s her ‘Little Flower’ really.

  JAMES: Helen gets confused. She thinks of us two as the old ones, but she’s old too. She means no harm.

  TERESA: Was I really dying the other day?

  JAMES: How do I know? We are all nearly dying I hope—except Rose.

  TERESA: Do you know for just a moment I didn’t want to die in the day nursery where all our toys used to be. I wanted to die where everybody else had died—in a real bedroom.

  JAMES: Why not?

  TERESA: Oh, it was only for a moment. Then I was so frightened. More frightened than I had ever been. Helen says it was my idea first—to close all the bedrooms. I can’t remember. Was it?

  JAMES: You both wanted it, I think. I can’t remember now. Anyway the rooms will be opened by somebody else before very long—perhaps by Rose.

  TERESA: People talk about the soul, but I always think of ghosts, the dead who can’t sleep. There was a story Helen told me once about lost souls …

  JAMES [interrupting]: It was wrong of me to give way about those rooms. When it began it seemed silly and unimportant. Why should I fight you over a fancy? But perhaps I should have fought you. I’ve been very useless, Teresa. Do you know one of my ‘day-dreams’? I get them again now—perhaps they belong to second childhood. I dream of helping somebody in great trouble. Saying the right word at the right time. In the old days in the confessional—once in five years perhaps—one sometimes felt one had done just that. It made the years between worth while. Now I doubt if I’d know the right word if the chance came.

  TERESA: I’m afraid of dying, James, even of thinking about death. Then Rose came, and I seemed to frighten her. It’s a nice house. We aren’t bad people. I don’t know why there should be so much fear around.

  JAMES: Perhaps your fear frightened her. Your silly fear of death.

  TERESA: Is it a silly fear, James?

  JAMES: No one who believes in God should be afraid of death.

  TERESA: But there’s Hell, James.

  JAMES: We aren’t as important as that, Teresa. Mercy is what I believe in. Hell is for the great, the very great. I don’t know anyone who’s great enough for Hell except Satan.

  TERESA: I sound a bit braver now, but it’s only because I’m back here—in the living room. It was good of Helen to hide that patch in my room with a picture, but I said not the ‘Little Flower’. Do you think Helen likes her because she died young? Sometimes she looks at Rose in a strange way, as though she’s thinking, I may survive even you.

  JAMES: You want to rest. Shall I read a little more?

  TERESA: Yes.

  JAMES: St John is still talking about the dark night of the soul. It’s a bit difficult to understand for me and you who’ve not got that far. You see it’s nearness to God that withers a man up. We are all such a long comfortable distance away. He is trying to describe the black night he found himself in—a night that seemed to be without love or even the power to pray.

  TERESA: I pray. Night and morning.

  JAMES: Oh, I remember my baby prayers, Teresa. Our Father, Hail Mary, an act of contrition. But I can’t meditate for ten minutes without my mind wandering—and as for contemplation it’s a whole world away. Something I have read about in the lives of the saints. When I was working in a parish I used to tell myself I had no time for prayer. Well, I have been given twenty years and I can still only say Our Father. And do I really say that?

  TERESA: I think you have got a dark night of your own, James.

  JAMES: No, I’d never reach that kind of despair. I have no parish drudgery, I’m comfortable, well fed, happy with both of you. I can read you what the saints say from books, even though I can’t feel with them. What’s for dinner, Teresa?

  TERESA: Macaroni cheese. [Suddenly realizing he is joking] Oh, James …

  [HELEN enters.]

  HELEN: Have you heard Mary come back, dear?

  JAMES: Isn’t she in the kitchen?

  HELEN: I sent her on an errand.

  JAMES: To the shops?

  HELEN: Not exactly.

  JAMES: Far?

  HELEN [ambiguously]: Oh, across the park.

  TERESA: I haven’t seen her since lunch.

  HELEN: She went out just after lunch. I hoped she’d be back to wash up the tea things, but I suppose I’d better do them myself.

  TERESA: Rose?

  HELEN: You don’t expect Rose to be here, do you, dear? [She goes out.]

  TERESA: What did she mean?

  JAMES: I don’t know.

  TERESA: Rose was very good to me when I was ill. I’d wake up sometimes so frightened and there she’d be, dozing in the chair by my bed. I remember when I was a child, before Helen was born, Mother used to give me a nightlight because I was so afraid. It made a sound like someone breathing quietly. Like Rose asleep.

  JAMES: She’s a kind child.

  TERESA: Except at the beginning. She was very harsh to me at the beginning. I wonder why.

  JAMES: It doesn’t matter now.

  TERESA: Just before I was ill, I remember Helen saying something to me about Rose going away. Where would she go to? Running away, I think she said. But why should she run away from us? Is that fear again?

  JAMES: Don’t worry. She’s still here.

  TEEESA: People don’t tell me things. And there’s such a lot I don’t understand.

  JAMES: Don’t try. It’s much better to believe only what we see, and not ask questions. Leave questions to the psychologists. ‘Is this really so?’ they ask you. ‘Do you really think that or just think that you think’ …

  [They neither of them have heard the footsteps on the stairs.]

  MARY [outside]: But, Miss Rose … Please, Miss Rose.

  ROSE: Come along in here.

  MARY: I had my orders, Miss Rose.

  ROSE: I know what your orders were.

  [The door is flung open and ROSE pushes MARY in ahead of her. ROSE has changed since we last saw her. She is angry now, but it isn’t that. Three weeks ago she was a muddled, enthusiastic, excitable child. She looks several years older now. She isn’t quite as pretty as she was. Disappointments, decisions and frustrations have filled the weeks and she has had time to think. Perhaps tha
t’s the biggest change.]

  ROSE: Go on. Tell your story.

  MARY: But, Miss Rose …

  ROSE: Oh, your employer isn’t here, is she? [She goes to the door and calls out.] Aunt Helen! Aunt Helen!

  TERESA: She’s in the kitchen, Rose.

  ROSE: She’ll be up soon. Now her spy’s returned.

  MARY: Please, Miss Rose …

  ROSE: Were you all in on this?

  JAMES: We don’t even know what this is.

  ROSE: I’m sorry. I might have guessed it was her work. She hates me.

  JAMES: Nonsense.

  ROSE: And I know why. Love is normal. Love is being born and growing older and having children and dying. She can’t bear that. She wants to build a wall of closed rooms—and in the middle there’s this living room. Nobody will ever die here. Perpetual motion. Nobody will ever be born here. That’s risky. I can camp here all night because I’m young and there’s no danger, but a man mustn’t come and see me here because life might not stand still. We might make love and that means getting older, running risks—in your precious museum piece of a room. Period 1902.

  [HELEN has entered during the last line.]

  HELEN: What’s that about 1902, little sweet—? [She sees MARY.] Mary, what are you doing here?

  ROSE: I brought her up with me. I wanted to hear her report too.

  HELEN: What report, dear?

  ROSE: The report on my movements, of course. How I arrived at Regal Court at two-forty-five and left at five-fifteen. How she recognized no one else who entered—because he’d got there first.

  HELEN: Mary, you’d better go.

  ROSE: I want to hear the report.

  HELEN: Go, Mary.

  [MARY leaves. A pause.]

  I can’t think what you are talking about.

  ROSE: Oh yes, you can. And now I’ll give you all the details Mary doesn’t know. Michael was there at half-past two—before me and Mary. I got there at three and I dressed again at five. She couldn’t tell you that, could she? And we didn’t make love all that time. Because people can’t. And we’d been there three or four times every week for three weeks. Ever since you stopped my running away for good. [Bitterly.] With your great need of help. You could have done without me all right—if Mary’s time had not been taken up this way.