Play With a Tiger and Other Plays - Doris Lessing

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got a child?

      ANNA [ironic]: Ho-ho, I see.

      DAVE: All right then, tell me truthfully, tell me straight, baby, none of the propaganda now, what does it really mean to you to have that kid?

      ANNA: But why should you be interested, you’re not going to have children …

      DAVE: Come on, Anna, you can’t have it both ways.

      ANNA: No.

      DAVE: Why not?

      ANNA [angry]: Because I can never say anything I think, I feel – it always ends up with what you think, you feel. My God, Dave, sometimes I feel you like a great black shadow over me I’ve got to get away from … oh all right, all right … [She stands, slowly smiles.]

      DAVE: Don’t give me that Mona Lisa stuff, I want to know.

      ANNA: Well. He sets me free. Yes, that’s it, he sets me free.

      DAVE: Why, for God’s sake, you spend your time in savage domesticity whenever he’s within twenty miles of you.

      ANNA: Don’t you see? He’s there. I go into his room when he’s asleep to take a good long look at him, because he’s too old now to look at when he’s awake, that’s already an interference. So I look at him. He’s there.

      DAVE: He’s there.

      ANNA: There he is. He’s something new. A kind of ray of light that shoots off into any direction. Or blazes up like a comet or goes off like a rocket.

      DAVE [angry]: Oh don’t tell me, you mean it gives you a sense of power – you look at him and you think – I made that.

      ANNA: No, that’s not it. Well, that’s what I said would happen. You asked, I told you, and you don’t believe me.

      [She turns her back on him, goes to window. A long wolf-whistle from outside. Another.]

      ANNA: Let’s ask him up and tell him the facts of life.

      DAVE: Not much point if he hasn’t got fifty shillings.

      ANNA: The State is prosperous. He will have fifty shillings.

      DAVE: No, let us preserve romance. Let him dream.

      [Shouting and quarrelling from the street.]

      DAVE [at window with her]: There’s the police.

      ANNA: They’re picking up the star-struck hero as well.

      DAVE: No mixing of the sexes at the police station so he can go on dreaming of his loved-one from afar even now.

      [A noise of something falling on the stairs. Voices. Giggling.]

      DAVE: What the hell’s that?

      ANNA: It’s Mary.

      DAVE: She’s got herself a man? Good for her.

      ANNA [distressed and irritable]: No, but she’s going to get herself laid. Well that’s OK with you isn’t it? Nothing wrong with getting oneself laid, according to you.

      DAVE: It might be the beginning of something serious for her.

      ANNA: Oh quite so. And when you get yourself laid. [conversationally and with malice] It’s odd the way the American male talks of getting himself laid. In the passive. ‘I went out and got myself laid’ what a picture – the poor helpless creature, pursuing his own pure concerns, while the predatory female creeps up behind him and lays him on his back …

      DAVE: Don’t get at me because you’re worried about Mary.

      [He goes over and puts his ann about her. For a moment, she accepts it.] Who is it?

      ANNA: Harry. [MARY and HARRY have arrived outside ANNA’S door. Can be seen as two shadows. One shadow goes upstairs. One shadow remains.] I hope she doesn’t come in.

      DAVE: But he shouldn’t be here if Helen’s in a bad way … [as ANNA looks at him] Hell. [He goes across to the mirror, where he stands grimacing at himself.]

      [MARY knocks and comes in. She is rather drunk and aggressive.]

      MARY: You’re up late aren’t you?

      ANNA: Have a good time?

      MARY: He’s quite amusing, Harry. [She affects a yawn.] I’m dead. Well, I think I’ll pop off to bed. [looking suspiciously at ANNA] You weren’t waiting up for me, were you?

      ANNA [looking across at DAVE]: No.

      [MARY sees DAVE, who is draping the black cloth across the mirror.]

      MARY: Well, what a stranger. What are you doing? Don’t you like the look of yourself?

      DAVE: Not very much. Do you?

      MARY: I’ve been talking over old times with Harry.

      DAVE: Yes, Anna said.

      MARY: I expect you two have been talking over old times too. I must go to bed, I’m dead on my feet. [There is a noise upstairs.] [quickly] That must be the cat. Have you seen the cat?

      ANNA: Yes, I suppose it must.

      MARY: I was saying to Anna, only today, I’m getting a proper old maid – if a widow can be an old maid, fussing over a cat, well you’d never believe when you were young what you’ll come to.

      DAVE: You an old maid – you’ve got enough spunk for a twenty-year-old.

      MARY: Yes, Harry was saying, I wouldn’t think you were a day over twenty-five, he said. [to DAVE] Did you know my boy was getting married next week?

      DAVE: Yes, I heard.

      MARY: He’s got himself a nice girl. But I can’t believe it. It seems only the other day … [There is a bang upstairs. A moment later, a loud miaow outside ANNA’S door.] Why, there’s my pussy cat. [Another crash upstairs.] I must go and see … [She scuttles out. HARRY’S shadow on the stairs.] [putting her head around the door] Isn’t it nice, Harry’s decided to pop back for a cup of coffee. [She shuts the door.]

      [ANNA and DAVE, in silence, opposite each other on the carpet. Dance music starts, soft, upstairs.]

      ANNA: A good lay, with music.

      DAVE: Don’t, baby. If I was fool enough to marry I’d be like Harry.

      ANNA: Yes.

      DAVE: Don’t hate him.

      ANNA: I can make out Harry’s case as well as you. He wanted to be a serious writer, but like a thousand others he’s got high standards and no talent. So he works on a newspaper he despises. He goes home to a wife who doesn’t respect him. So he has to have the little girls to flatter him and make him feel good. OK Dave – but what more do you want? I’ll be back on duty by this evening, pouring out sympathy in great wet gobs and I’ll go on doing it until he finds another little girl who looks at him with gooey eyes and says: oh Harry, oh Dave, you’re so wonderful.

      DAVE: It wouldn’t do you any harm to indulge in a bit of flattery from time to time.

      ANNA: Oh yes it would. I told you, I’m having the truth with a man or nothing. I watch women buttering up their men, anything for a quiet life and despising them while they do it. It makes me sick.

      DAVE: Baby, I pray for the day when you flatter me for just ten seconds.

      ANNA: Oh go and get it from – Janet.

      [MARY comes in fast, without knocking.]

      MARY [she is very aggressive]: Anna, I didn’t like your manner just now. Sometimes there is something in your way I don’t like at all.

      [ANNA turns away.]

      ANNA: Mary, you’re

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