The Living Room Read online

  MICHAEL: But I want you to be happy. We haven’t been happy. Long before I met Rose …

  MRS DENNIS: You talk so much about happiness. No. I wasn’t happy. Do you think I’m going to be more happy without you? Happiness isn’t everything, is it? Do you often come across someone happy at your lectures? I don’t want to be alone, Michael. I’m afraid of being alone. Michael, for God’s sake … I forgot. You don’t believe in God. Only she does.

  [ROSE can stand it no more. She comes back into the fight.]

  ROSE: Stop. Please stop. You are making it so complicated. Both of you.

  [They both turn and look at her. It’s as if she were the outsider. She looks from one to the other.]

  We love each other, Mrs Dennis. It’s as simple as that. This happens every day, doesn’t it? You read it in the papers. People can’t all behave like this. There are four hundred divorces a month.

  MICHAEL: Then there are hundreds of suffering people.

  ROSE: But, darling, you aren’t going to suffer, are you? You want to live with me. You want to go away. You don’t want to stay with her. We are going to be happy.

  MRS DENNIS: You see—she doesn’t suffer.

  MICHAEL [turning on her angrily]: She doesn’t shout it aloud, that’s all. She doesn’t use it as a weapon. [Lowering his voice] I’m sorry. I’m shouting too. This is making us all hysterical.

  MRS DENNIS: You won’t have to be hysterical any more. [She gets up.] You can go home. [She catches on the word.] I mean to the house—and pack. I won’t be there. I’ll keep out of the way till you’ve gone. [She walks to the door.] You can sleep there tonight. I won’t be there. [She goes.]

  [ROSE holds out a hand to MICHAEL, but he doesn’t see it. He is staring at the door.]

  MICHAEL [to himself]: God knows what she’ll do.

  [He leaves the room, and we hear him calling to her from the head of the stairs—it is the first time we have heard her first name.]

  [Outside, calling] Marion! Marion!

  [ROSE listens with her hand still held out. Then she lets it fall to her side.]

  MICHAEL [outside]: Marion! [He comes slowly back into the room-talking more to himself than to ROSE, to keep his courage up.] She won’t do anything. People who talk about suicide never do anything.

  [A pause.]

  Do they?

  ROSE: No. What are we going to do, Michael?

  [He doesn’t hear her. His eyes are on the door.]

  Michael! Michael!

  MICHAEL: Yes?

  ROSE: What are we going to do, Michael?

  MICHAEL [with unhappy bitterness]: Oh, we are going to be happy.

  ROSE: Are you?

  MICHAEL: Of course. And you. We’ll both get over this. [Still with bitterness against himself] It’s easy to get over other people’s pain. I know. I deal with it all day long. Pain is my profession.

  ROSE: Did you mean what you said to her? That we are going away?

  MICHAEL: Did I tell her that? Oh yes, she made me angry.

  ROSE: Didn’t you mean it?

  MICHAEL: Of course. As soon as your aunt’s better. We always said so.

  ROSE: She’s better now. I’m free.

  MICHAEL [slowly]: Then—of course—we can go.

  ROSE: When? Now? Tomorrow?

  [MICHAEL hesitates very slightly.]

  MICHAEL: The day after. You see—I must find out how she is.

  ROSE: I wish you didn’t love her so.

  MICHAEL: My dear, my dear—there’s no need of jealousy.

  ROSE: I’m not jealous. I hate to see you suffer. That’s all.

  MICHAEL: We’ll be all right—the day after tomorrow. [He kisses her and goes to the door.]

  ROSE [anxious, not knowing what to say, in a schoolgirl accent]: À bientôt.

  MICHAEL [his mind still on his wife]: I wish I knew where she’d gone. She hasn’t many friends. [He goes out.]

  [ROSE, at that last phrase, puts her hand over her mouth. As soon as she hears his feet on the stairs she sits miserably down, her hand still clamped over her mouth, as though that can stop tears. The sound of HELEN’S voice and the grind of the chair wheels drives her to her feet. HELEN pushes in her brother in his chair.]

  HELEN: When are you leaving? It’s convenient to know.

  ROSE [the phrase sounds weak even to her]: The day after tomorrow.

  HELEN [to her brother]: Don’t forget you’ve promised to read to Teresa.

  JAMES: I won’t forget. But there’s something you’ve forgotten.

  [HELEN hesitates, then goes to ROSE and kisses her cheek. HELEN leaves.

  ROSE feels the place as though she were feeling a roughness of the skin. A long pause.]

  Can I help at all?

  ROSE [as though to herself]: I told him not to make me think. I warned him not to.

  [FATHER BROWNE sits hunched in his chair saying nothing.] If we’d gone that day we’d have been happy. I don’t think unless people make me. I can’t think about people I don’t know. She was just a name, that’s all. And then she comes here and beats her fists on the table and cries in the chair. I saw them together. They are married, Uncle. I never knew they were married. Oh, he’d told me they were, but I hadn’t seen them, had I? It was only like something in a book, but now I’ve seen them together. I’ve seen him touch her arm. Uncle, what am I to do? [She flings herself on the ground beside him.] Tell me what to do, Father!

  JAMES: When you say ‘Father’, you seem to lock my mouth. There are only hard things to say.

  ROSE: I only want somebody to say, ‘Do this, do that.’ I only want somebody to say, ‘Go here, go there.’ I don’t want to think any more.

  JAMES: And if I say, ‘Leave him’…

  ROSE: I couldn’t bear the pain.

  JAMES: Then you’d better go with him, if you’re as weak as that.

  ROSE: But I can’t bear hers, either.

  JAMES: You’re such a child. You expect too much. In a case like yours we always have to choose between suffering our own pain or suffering other people’s. We can’t not suffer.

  ROSE: But there are happy people. People run away all the time and are happy. I’ve read about them.

  JAMES: I’ve read about them too. And the fairy stories which say, ‘They lived happily ever afterwards.’

  ROSE: But it can be true.

  JAMES: Perhaps—for fools. My dear, you’re neither of you fools. He spends his time dissecting human motives. He knows his own selfishness, just in the same way as you know your own guilt. A psychologist and a Catholic, you can’t fool yourselves—except for two hours in Regal Court.

  ROSE: I can. I can.

  JAMES: You’ve got a lifetime to fool yourself in It’s a long time, to keep forgetting that poor hysterical woman who has a right to need him.

  ROSE [crying out with pain]: Oh!

  [The door opens and TERESA enters in her dressing-gown. ROSE, with her hand over her mouth, follows with her eyes. TERESA, paying no attention to them,goes to the closet. As the door closes,ROSE sobs on her uncle’s knee. He tries to soothe her with his hand. She raises her head.]

  It’s horrible, horrible, horrible!

  JAMES: I hoped you’d go on thinking it was funny.

  ROSE: I can’t go on living here with them. Like this. In a room where nobody has died. Uncle, please tell me to go. Tell me I’m right to go. Don’t give me a Catholic reason. Help me. Please help me

  JAMES: I want to help you. I want to be of use. I would want it if it were the last thing in life I could have. But when I talk my tongue is heavy with the Penny Catechism.

  ROSE: Can’t you give me anything to hope for?

  JAMES: Oh, hope! That’s a different matter. There’s always hope.

  ROSE: Hope of what?

  JAMES: Of getting over it. Forgetting him.

  [ROSE jumps to her feet and swings away from him. He is struggling for words but can find none—except formulae.]

  Dear, there’s always the Mass. It’s there to help. Y
our Rosary, you’ve got a Rosary, haven’t you? Perhaps Our Lady … prayer.

  ROSE [with hatred and contempt]: Prayer!

  JAMES: Rose … please … [He is afraid of what she may say and desperately seeking for the right words, but still he can’t find them.] Just wait …

  ROSE: You tell me if I go with him he’ll be unhappy for a lifetime. If I stay here, I’ll have nothing but that closet and this—living room. And you tell me there’s hope and I can pray. Who to? Don’t talk to me about God or the saints. I don’t believe in your God who took away your legs and wants to take away Michael. I don’t believe in your Church and your Holy Mother of God. I don’t believe. I don’t believe.

  [JAMES holds out a hand to her, but she draws away from it.] I wish to God I didn’t feel so lonely.

  [HELEN enters. She takes the scene coldly in.]

  HELEN: It’s nearly dinner time. Teresa’s been asking for you, and I’ve got to lay the table here.

  JAMES: Couldn’t we tonight—use another room?

  HELEN: You know very well there isn’t another room.

  [She takes his chair and pushes him to the door. He makes no further protest. He feels too old and broken.

  To ROSE]: If you’ll start laying, I’ll be with you in a moment.

  [HELEN pushes JAMES out. ROSE is alone.]

  ROSE: I don’t believe. I don’t believe. [She drags herself across the room. She sees the bottle and kneels down and picks it up. Then desperately she goes towards the closet door and calls.]

  Aunt Teresa! Dear Aunt Teresa …

  [The closet door opens and TERESA comes out. She moves across the room, ignoring ROSE, as is her custom.]

  Please, Aunt Teresa …

  [For a moment the old fuddled brain seems to take in the appeal. She half turns to ROSE, then walks on to the door.]

  For God’s sake, speak to me, Aunt Teresa! It’s Rose!

  [TERESA goes out and shuts the door behind her. ROSE sinks hopelessly down on the landing outside the closet door.]

  Won’t somebody help me?

  [She begins to shake the tablets out of the bottle. When she has them all in her hand, she makes an attempt to pray, but she can’t remember the words.]

  Our Father who art … who art …

  [Suddenly she plunges into a childish prayer quite mechanically and without thinking of what she’s saying, looking at the tablets in her hand.]

  Bless Mother, Nanny and Sister Marie-Louise, and please God don’t let school start again ever.

  CURTAIN

  SCENE TWO

  The Living Room. Next morning.

  [A lot of bedding is piled on the floor. FATHER JAMES BROWNE sits in his chair and MICHAEL DENNIS has his back turned to him and is staring through the window. MARY, the daily woman, is dragging a heavy chair towards the door.]

  MARY [pausing]: ‘Miss Helen,’ I said, ‘it’s time you let things rest where they rightly belong.’ ‘Mary,’ she said, ‘you are paid by the hour for your services and not for your advice.’

  JAMES: Do you want help with that chair?

  MARY: I’d rather not, sir. Let each stick to his own job, or more harm’s done. [She gets the chair almost to the door, and turns again. To JAMES] I wish I’d said to her, ‘Miss Helen, I’m paid for housework,’ before ever I went watching that poor girl.

  JAMES: There are a terrible lot of vain wishes about the house today.

  MARY: I’m forgetting the bedding. [She piles the bedding on the chair.] It’s an awful waste of space. Will they let me keep the empty trunks in here, do you think? And where will you be eating your meals now? It seems a shame to me in a house as big as this there shouldn’t be one living room for all of you.

  [HELEN enters during her speech.]

  HELEN: You are taking a long time, Mary.

  [MICHAEL moves from the window and HELEN sees him.]

  I didn’t know Mr Dennis was here.

  [MARY leaves.]

  MICHAEL: I came to see her. You hadn’t even the mercy to warn me she was dead.

  HELEN: But you’re not one of the family. [She picks up a chair.]

  MICHAEL: For somebody so frightened of death you’ve done a lot of harm.

  HELEN [carefully ignoring MICHAEL]: James, if we use Teresa’s room as a bed-sitting-room—it’s large enough—we shan’t have to move you at all.

  JAMES: I’m not interested today in where I sleep.

  HELEN: If you were a woman you’d realize that life has to go on.

  MICHAEL: Rose was a woman, and she had a different idea.

  [HELEN puts down the chair.]

  HELEN: Why are you blaming me for this? If anyone’s guilty, it’s you. [To MICHAEL] It’s you who’ve been killing her—all these weeks at Regal Court. Killing her conscience, so in the end she did—that.

  MICHAEL [accusingly to HELEN]: If you hadn’t brought my wife here, there’d have been no sleeping pills.

  JAMES: There would have been a window, a Tube train. It won’t help her to choose who’s guilty. [To MICHAEL] And you are not supposed to believe in guilt.

  HELEN: I know the guilty one.

  MICHAEL [breaking out]: You do, do you. Look in your damned neurotic heart …

  JAMES: I thought Freud said there was no such thing as guilt …

  MICHAEL: For God’s sake, don’t talk psychology at me today. Psychology wasn’t any use to her. Books, lectures, analysis of dreams. Oh, I knew the hell of a lot, didn’t I, about the human mind—[Turning away] She lay on this floor.

  JAMES: And our hearts say guilty.

  MICHAEL: Yes. Guilty.

  HELEN: Mine doesn’t.

  MICHAEL: Then why don’t you sleep in this room? You’re innocent. All right then. What are you afraid of?

  JAMES: Yes, what are you afraid of, Helen?

  HELEN [startled]: You know we agreed …

  JAMES: Agreed?

  HELEN: I couldn’t frighten Teresa like that. You know how she feels. We can’t go against Teresa—she’s so old. I’m not afraid, but Teresa …

  JAMES: It’s Teresa, is it?

  HELEN: Of course it’s Teresa. No one should sleep in this room, James.

  JAMES: Even me?

  HELEN [fearfully]: It’s all decided, James. Teresa’s bedroom will be the living room too. Mary’s preparing it now. You know what a lovely room it is, James. Plenty of space. [Puts the chair outside the door and returns.] It’s time to close this room.

  JAMES: You can leave us, Helen, and see about your business.

  [HELEN hesitates, with her eye on MICHAEL.]

  The room won’t harm him and me for the little time we’ll be here.

  [HELEN makes to reply, but instead she picks up a small chair and goes out.

  A pause.]

  MICHAEL: Three weeks ago Rose and I came into this room together. A lover and his inexperienced mistress. [As though defending himself] You can’t believe how happy she was that day.

  JAMES: She grew up quickly.

  MICHAEL: Did she talk to you last night?

  JAMES: Yes.

  MICHAEL: Why did she do it?

  JAMES: She was afraid of pain. Your pain, her pain, your wife’s pain.

  MICHAEL: It was my wife who rang me here just now. She’d heard. God knows how. She was—terribly—sympathetic.

  JAMES: What will you do?

  MICHAEL: Go on living with her. If you can call it living. It’s a funny thing. I’m supposed to be a psychologist and I’ve ruined two people’s minds.

  JAMES: Psychology may teach you to know a mind. It doesn’t teach you to love.

  MICHAEL: I did love her.

  JAMES: Oh yes, I know. And I thought I loved her too. But none of us loves enough. Perhaps the saints. Perhaps not even them. Dennis, I’ve got to tell somebody this. You may understand. It’s your job to understand.

  MICHAEL [bitterly]: My job—

  JAMES: For more than twenty years I’ve been a useless priest. I had a real vocation for the priesthood—perhaps you’d explai
n it in terms of a father complex. Never mind now. I’m not laughing at you. To me it was a real vocation. And for twenty years it’s been imprisoned in this chair—the desire to help. You have it too in your way, and it would still be there if you lost your sight and speech. Last night God gave me my chance. He flung this child, here, at my knees, asking for help, asking for hope. That’s what she said, ‘Can’t you give me anything to hope for?’ I said to God, ‘Put words into my mouth,’ but he’s given me twenty years in this chair with nothing to do but prepare for such a moment, so why should He interfere? And all I said was, ‘You can pray.’ If I’d ever really known what prayer was, I would only have had to touch her to give her peace. ‘Prayer,’ she said. She almost spat the word.

  MICHAEL: I went away to look for my wife. I was frightened about her. What do we do now? Is everything going to be the same as before?

  JAMES: Three old people have lost a living room, that’s all. A psychologist with a sick wife. She’s fallen like a stone into a pond.

  MICHAEL: Can you believe in a God who lets that happen?

  JAMES: Yes.

  MICHAEL: It’s a senseless creed.

  JAMES: It seems that sometimes.

  MICHAEL: And cruel.

  JAMES: There’s one thing I remember from the seminary. I’ve forgotten nearly all the things they taught me, even the arguments for the existence of God. It comes from some book of devotion. ‘The more our senses are revolted, uncertain and in despair, the more surely Faith says: “This is God: all goes well.”’

  MICHAEL: ‘All goes well.’ Do you really feel that?

  JAMES: My senses don’t feel it. They feel nothing but revolt, uncertainty, despair. But I know it—at the back of my mind. It’s my weakness that cries out.

  MICHAEL: I can’t believe in a God who doesn’t pity weakness.

  JAMES [imploringly]: I wish you’d leave Him alone today. Don’t talk of Him with such hatred even if you don’t believe in Him. If He exists, He loved her too, and saw her take that senseless drink. And you don’t know and I don’t know the amount of love and pity He’s spending on her now.